Why Palestinians won’t leave their land

The more Israel tries to make Palestinian life impossible in Palestine, the more Palestinians resist.

In the last year, over 200,000 of my people have been slaughtered in Gaza. Simultaneously, the occupying Israeli army carried out the largest assault on the Palestinian West Bank since the 2000’s Second Intifada. Now, we see our Lebanese neighbors, and brothers in struggle, experiencing the same acts of state-sponsored violence – villages across the south forced to flee as their homes are indiscriminately bombed under guise of fabricated claims of occupation officials. In each instance of Israeli invasion, occupation, and brutalization, western media often frames Israel a hero, giving Palestinians, or Lebanese, the opportunity to “flee” as they aim to hunt down and kill those resisting the colonization of their land. We are told that we can “return” once their operations are down. However, their operations result decimation of our lands and infrastructure, the murder of our children, and the destruction of our homes as they make plans to build over Palestinian bones – this is why we will never leave our land.

Like many Palestinians of my generation, we grew up everywhere besides Palestine: physically, spiritually, and emotionally disconnected from where we know we belonged. Over the last year,  I have become closer to understanding the catastrophe that my people endured in 1948 as I watched the decimation of infrastructure in Jenin and Gaza; however, the spirit of resistance still gives these cities life. Jenin makes up the ‘Cradle of Resistance’ alongside Nablus, Gaza, and Khalil, cities who have faced continuous invasions and land thefts since the Oslo accords. Waves of resistance in the camps follow the decades long struggle against settler-colonialism and host of other war crimes meant to strip the human dignity of the Palestinians people. Though, if it is not clear, the Palestinian people are the land, and we do not want to be displaced again.

As a Palestinian, the question of why we refuse to leave our homes and ancestral lands, even in the face of settler encroachment, raids, and violence, is one that is deeply personal and fundamental to our identity. It is not simply a matter of geography or property ownership, but a profound connection to the land that is woven into the fabric of our history, culture, and collective memory. There is a stubbornness to our decision, yes, but also a deep understanding that to leave would be to sever a connection that has been in place for generations.

As a farming civilization, olive tree is the perfect symbol of that stubbornness. Olive trees are ancient, resilient, and deeply rooted—just like the Palestinian people. Families tend to these trees the way they tend to their heritage. The act of harvesting olives, pressing them into oil, and sharing that oil with loved ones is an act of cultural preservation. Destroying an olive tree is more than an act of environmental damage—it’s an attack on our very identity – and for that reason, Israel has destroyed 800,000 olive trees since 1967.

I have witnessed firsthand the relentless efforts of settlers and the Israeli military to displace us from our homes. Each time I go back to Palestine, illegal settlements I once saw as sporadic homes have now become full cities – enclosing Palestinians from all sides, effectively annexing us from our land. The Palestinian landscape is stolen, the trees burned, and the water stolen while families are forced to watch and pay for their homes to be demolished. Yet our resolve to remain steadfast only strengthens, our Sumud – steadfastness – never fades. We refuse to be shaken, even as we see formative places of memory disappear, such as the once-vibrant market in Ramallah, burned down earlier this year by settlers.

The resilience of the Palestinian people is deeply embedded in our history. The Nakba of 1948, which saw over 700,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced, was meant to fracture the Palestinian people and erase their connection to the land. Approximately 500 villages were destroyed or depopulated during the Nakba, including the iconic village of Lifta. This historical experience has been the bedrock of sumud. The Nakba’s displacement planted seeds of determination, turning forced removal into a call for justice that still reverberates today. Palestinians have rebuilt communities, reasserted identity, and maintained their connection to the land, regardless of where they were scattered.

Palestinians from Jenin to Gaza exercise this resilience every day. Despite the ongoing bombardment, despite the killings, despite everything. And they have devised makeshift solutions to daily life —like a hand washing machine made from a bicycle, a clay oven made from mud and straw to bake bread, and assembling generators from whatever machine parts they can find. These are just a few acts of stubborn perseverance under siege, of sumud crystallized.

Sumud in the diaspora must be an active force propelling us to make Palestinian liberation possible. The first step is to defeat the defeatist mentality common amongst so many in the west – to squash the sense of protest fatigue or feeling emotionally spent by the struggle. We have no excuse to grow weary when Gazans by their life and blood create sumud: picking up the pieces of their families, society, and with every effort trying to rebuild.

Today, the dispossession of Palestinian land continues through the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the evictions of Palestinian families from neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah. This is not a historical injustice confined to the past; it is an ongoing reality that shapes the lives of Palestinians today. As the occupation as paved through Gaza’s coasts, and now South Lebanon, private Israeli companies are now trying to sell land for new settlements with AI generated amusement parks and homes built over the bones of our people.

Yet the overwhelming response from Palestinians is not to flee but to stand firm. Sumud is the act of remaining in the face of near-impossible odds, of rebuilding time and time again even as the earth is pulled from beneath your feet. We rebuild because we are not just fighting for survival but for the right to exist as a people on our own land

This sumud ties back to the Nakba. That initial displacement didn’t break us; if anything, it solidified the resolve of Palestinians to remain on their land. Those who were forced to flee have never stopped dreaming of returning. The right to return is not just a slogan or a political bargaining chip—it is a matter of justice and identity enshrined in International Law, just as our right to resist our occupation by any means necessary. It is a recognition of the fact that to be Palestinian is to belong to the land, and to be forcibly removed is to be torn from the essence of who we are.

We Are the Land

The metaphor of “we are the land” is not just poetic—it is a lived reality for Palestinians. When they ask, “why don’t you leave as you face these invasions?” We respond with “Why should we?” This is our land, cultivated by generations of tears, blood, and stories. To live on this land is to die in it. Within this land is the soul that fills life with purpose. Leaving would mean losing everything. It would mean allowing the erasure of our history, our collective memory. And so we remain, not out of stubbornness but out of necessity. We remain because we must. To leave would be to lose ourselves, and that is something we cannot and will not allow, from Gaza to Jenin and the rest of historic Palestine, our occupiers will never crush the spirit of resistance towards liberation¹.

1. I wrote an edited version of this article which was published by Al Jazeera and is their intellectual property.