I recently traveled outside of Palestine back home to the U.S. for a visit to see family. It’s an occasion that doesn’t happen often. With all the visa restrictions placed on me over the years and the problems I encounter from Israeli security at the border crossings, I try to limit my trips in and out.
Leaving Palestine can often feel like a surreal experience. The way I describe it is like being held underwater, and the second you cross that final border to the outside world, you are suddenly pulled out from the deep end and into the air. You would think it would come as a relief, but it rarely does.
Over the years, I have found that for myself, and I believe for many of my friends and colleagues in the profession of journalism in Palestine, leaving Palestine, even for short periods of time, can bring on many feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame.
When we are in Palestine, on the streets, in people’s homes, listening to and reporting on people’s stories and daily lives, it becomes a part of us — their names, faces, stories, and memories. When I am in Palestine, as overwhelming as the daily reality of life can be, I feel like I can still be of service to help tell people’s stories. If something happens, I can get up and go cover it.
When you are taken out of that environment, it can feel more overwhelming than before. You quickly begin to feel guilty for leaving, for watching from the outside looking in, as people’s lives continue to be upended through dispossession and despair. You feel shame for even having the ability to remove yourself when you know that the vast majority of Palestinians living on the ground will never have that ability. You feel like with all the news happening on the ground, you cannot do justice to people’s stories in the way you would be able to if you were actually there.
I write all this with the knowledge of the privilege I hold as a foreign national. As someone who has the ability to travel to and live in Palestine when millions of Palestinian refugees are being denied access to their homeland. And as someone who can also remove themself if the going gets tough.
All this is to say that these feelings I experience, in my belief, are not unique to me. It’s one of the more silent struggles of being a journalist in places like Palestine. When you live in a place long enough and care about the people you meet and the stories they share with you, being removed from that environment and those situations can present an immense challenge, both professionally and personally.
As journalists, particularly those working in “conflict zones,” we are often told we must find a way to strike a “balance.” But when you care so deeply about the community and place in which you live and report, how do you reconcile that with the responsibility you feel?
It’s an answer I am still trying to figure out.
