Han Chen

COMM 462

Profile Story

Between America and West Bank, a Girl’s Dream for Palestine

For more than two months, Nour Zamel was troubled by a deadly event far from home but hit

her close to home.

One recent evening, Zamel was on her home computer for a school research project when she

pulled out her Facebook for a friend’s help on an anatomy assignment. She was paralyzed by

what she saw next.

From her newsfeeds, raw posts about the heart-rending death of Inas Khalil, a 5-year-old

Palestinian kindergartener, swamped her homepage. Multiple Arab news agencies reported that

Inas, along with one of her girlfriends, was overrun in a street crossing by a Jewish settler’s

vehicle north of Ramallah, a major city in the West Bank. The driver immediately fled the scene,

and Inas died hours later in a local hospital.

Somehow, Zamel thought the victim’s name sounded familiar, and her mother confirmed her

worst fear. By invitation of a family friend, Zamel had met Inas when she was barely two weeks

old and still in a tiny swaddle, and she never visited the family again.

Once again, Zamel had to confront sudden death of Palestinians whom she had known in the

past. This time, despite the similar pattern of attack, Zamel had at least one solace. Seventeen

years after her family left Palestine for America, she revisited her home country and documented

an intimate account of her people. Now, one full year after the trip, she is presenting it before a

Western audience, right here at her second home, which she fondly adopted as “the Land of

Liberty.”

In essence, she is launching an awareness campaign. Brushing aside a prevalent belief that an

intifada cannot gain recognition without violent sacrifices, Zamel, a coming-of-age Generation

Yer, is "shaking off" the old baggage of Jewish-Arab blood feud. Pivoting against a geopolitical

flash point that is often characterized as "if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the

problem,” Zamel wants to be part of the solution.

Nour Abdullah Nayan Zamel, 17, is a graduating senior at O’Fallon Township High School. As

she insisted to be known as a multinational, Zamel is a vivid example of a Palestinian-Jordanian-

American who reconciled with two eras of repressive national memories. She stood against the

generation of silence when many indigenous Arabs lost their ancestral homes to Israel in two

regional wars during 1948 and 1967. She looked past the generation of rage when desperate

Palestinians about her age waged two violent national uprisings, known as the First and the

Second Intifada, or “shaking off” in Arabic. For Zamel, the radical sentiments of the deadly wars

and intifadas do not define her activism today.

“Too much blood have been shed and too many lives have been lost to the decades-old conflict

between Israelis and Palestinians,” Zamel said. “Please don’t laugh at me, but I want to make a

difference in this world through peaceful means.”

Last July, when Zamel finally set the date for her long-anticipated project trip to the West Bank,

she decided to fly with her aunt—who was visiting her college-age son in Nablus—to Israel and

then traveled to the West Bank from there. As it turned out for her first brief stay in Israel ever,

Zamel headed into a heated confrontation with Israeli authority before exiting the airport.

After their flight landed at the David Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel, several custom agents soon

spotted Zamel wearing a kuffiyeh, which she wore that day to show national pride, so they

flagged aside the two travelers. Because they were carrying American passports, the agents first

mistook them as simply Americans. Detecting nothing suspicious of their documents, they

questioned why Zamel was wearing a kuffiyeh, the iconic Palestinian national symbol

immortalized by the two intifadas, when young Palestinians wore them during revolts against

Israeli military.

“I told them that I can wear whatever I want,” Zamel recalled. “I wanted them to know that I

came from America, a land of freedom, and I’ve always learned to be free.”

After hours of frantic searches on her social media accounts, Zamel said, the agents finally

released them, unable to gather any material evidence against her.

The unforgiving drama upon arrival only marked the beginning of her project trip. After reaching

Nablus, Zamel partnered with her 18-year-old cousin Adam, who traveled alongside with her to

safeguard her security as a minor in a treacherous territory fraught with instability.

During the month she stayed in Palestine, Adam drove her to many cities and villages in the

West Bank, including Jenin, Aqraba, Ramallah, Hebron and East Jerusalem. From sunrise to

sunset, Zamel made road stops frequently, piecing together an expansive gallery of the indigenes

with full authenticity. Above all, she snapped pictures of teenage boys hurling rocks toward

Israeli patrol vehicles and soldiers. During her interactions with many of them who were

fortunate enough to escape arrests or injuries, Zamel learned that most of them had been

separated from a loved one to the Israeli military either in death or in lengthy prison terms.

Stone-throwing, a behavior that ironically triggers more injuries and death, lived on as the last

recourse for revenge.

Realizing street skirmishes in West Bank villages are a daily occurrence, Zamel did not rest with

just that. She also photographed and interviewed elderlies and teenagers across territory. While

the silver-haired mostly recalled the sudden death of grandchildren in their own households or

neighbors’, many youths, when not throwing stones, told intimate narratives of hope. Zamel said

that her conversation with a boy in a Nablus village still grips her to this day. This 8-year-old

told Zamel that he wished to be the first pilot for Palestine, and he had always dreamed that one

day Palestine could have its own airport.

“I could never forget this adorable boy,” Zamel fondly recalled. “He even offered to visit me in

America during his future world tour in his aircraft.”

As if profiling lives in the West Bank was still incomplete, Zamel floated another daring

proposal—a trip to Gaza. Despite of the ill prospects of going alone—Adam would have likely

been banned from entry because of his West Bank residency—and security risks, she was bent

on visiting this neglected patch of Palestinian residence. Zamel pleaded with her parents for day,

trying to score the go-ahead for her last outing. In the end, she earned a conditioned permission:

She must return to Nablus on the same night. For her project, one day was all she needed, so off

she went.

Her cousin Adam was so shaken by Zamel’s plan that he even refused to drive Zamel to East

Jerusalem, the first leg of her trip to Gaza. Undeterred, Zamel took a taxi all the way from

Nablus to the Erez Crossing, a border checkpoint between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Because the

taxi was not permitted to cross, Zamel walked into this seaside territory herself with just one

handbag holding her phone and camera.

After half an hour, Zamel reached the edge of the Jabalia Camp, a seaside shantytown with about

100,000 refugees today. Near the streets where raw sewage went uncollected and water puddle

undrained, she encountered a flight of local children playing in the field. They circled around

her, admiring a female visitor in their impoverished neighborhood. When they learned that

Zamel came from America, the little crowd was electrified by the arrival of a Westerner who

spoke Arabic. Before long they also learned that Zamel was a Palestinian herself, many of them

flew back home to notify their parents of this unexpected guest. A few minutes later, five

families were extending her home invitations that day, all curious to hear about what a

Palestinian-American thinks of Gaza’s today and tomorrow.

“People just hardly imagine how hospitable the Palestinian families are, even those who still stay

in camps to this day.” she said.

Zamel made her trip to Gaza a highlight in her presentation, which she called an intentional

maneuver that underscored the urgency of the present situation in Gaza. The 50-day war in the

midsummer this year between Israel and Hamas claimed over 2,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza,

over a quarter of which were children, according to multiple agencies of the United Nations.

With a full-blown humanitarian crisis in full effect, Zamel said her presentation is a clarion call

for public awareness and charitable actions.

After consulting with faculty members, Zamel scheduled to present her project in the school

auditorium on Nov. 17. The presentation will be open to everyone in her high school and the O’

Fallon community.

“I expect most of them to get emotional because of the presentation touches on some of the most

spontaneous dreams and resolutions of the Palestinians,” she said of the presentation. “However,

my goal is not to let tear be the only answer because I want to encourage them to hurdle past

pure emotions. They need to be more aware of the situations there and reach better judgment

themselves in future events.”

For her to be the budding youth activist today, Zamel said, has everything to do with her

grandfather, a family patriarch in Palestine. Without the lessons she learned from that avuncular

old man, she would have lost much of her Palestinian roots and spirits for peace.

Nayan Zamel, a 68-year-old who still teaches at the Hashemite University in Jordan after

retirement age, was the three-generation patriarch whose family dwelled in a tightknit Arab

village called al-Masaken near Nablus.

Nayan was the first man who went to college and graduated from An-Najah National University

in Nablus with a political science degree. Following the Israeli military occupation of the West

Bank after the Six-Day War in 1967, the Zamels began to sense the first pinch of Israeli

occupations, which would soon become more conspicuous in a few years with the influx of

Jewish settlers into the area. It was then Nayan left for Jordan.

Ever since she was a toddler, Zamel said, her family is used to spending whole summers either in

Amman or Nablus, shuttling back and forth with her relatives. At her grandfather’s house in

Jordan, Zamel began to learn Hebrew at age 9. She said that Nayan always believed that every

Palestinian should study how to speak Hebrew because it could be a safeguard in times of need,

citing an episode that Nayan defused a confrontation between a Jewish and Arab man at an

Israeli gas station with his fluency in Hebrew and Arabic.

In 2006, when she returned to Nablus again, Zamel learned about the tragic loss of Yasser

Nasser, a son to her grandmother’s neighbor. A 24-year-old, Nasser had been a medical student

in graduate school doing his residency at a local hospital. Zamel had known him before when the

young man invited her to his workplace to observe a doctor’s everyday tasks. One day after his

work, Nasser rushed to aid a 16-year-old teenager on a gravel road in Rafidia—a tiny village in

Nablus—who had just been shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers because he tossed rocks at them.

They bid Nasser not to touch the boy because of an arrest order, but Nasser disobeyed the

warning and screamed for immediate medical attention of the hemorrhaging youth (He died

later). In the midst of chaos, Nasser too braced bullets for defying authority. The bystanders

looked on agape, too afraid of intervening the situation. Nasser expired next to the younger boy.

It is a Muslim custom that the dead must be buried as soon as possible if condition permits, but

Nasser could not even get a timely burial, Zamel said. Immediately after the shooting, the

soldiers held his body indefinitely because it was a military protocol that the body of any

Palestinian who had constituted a threat before death must be kept by Israeli police, pending

instructions from superiors. Zamel said it took five hours for the soldiers to transfer the body to

Palestinian police, who in turn returned him back to Nasser’s family.

Against her mother’s wish, Zamel sneaked out of her grandmother’s house to catch a glimpse of

Nasser. It is a Palestinian tradition for the entire village to pay their respects for a national martyr

by visiting his family. That was Zamel first time standing before a dead body, the motionless

Nasser lying under a white bed sheet with only his ashen face peeking out.

“There I met with Yasser’s younger sister, and to this day, I could still remember the profound

sorrow in her eyes,” Zamel said somberly.

Her mother, Alia al-Nabulsi, who has been a regular member in almost every family summer

trip, admitted that Nasser’s death casted an emotional reservoir for her daughter’s earthy

compassion toward the mistreated Palestinians. Ever since then, Zamel has dreamed of becoming

a pediatrician in Palestine to assist the hurt youth caught in the snag of cross-border conflicts, a

pragmatic goal however troubles Alia.

“I want her to be safe here around me. I want to see her successful in life and live the typical

Arab-American life in the future,” Alia confided in a Skype interview. “However, Nour thinks

that her dreams are all in Palestine.”

So when Zamel was on the move again, she thought of returning to her family root for the

project. Although it was a glimpse of death that inspired her undertaking, Zamel decided to

celebrate life with this initiative, therefore came about her trip last year.

Jacob Akabieh, 17, who has known Zamel since the second grade in Huston, Texas, said that

their longstanding friendship has deepened his knowledge of Palestinians’ plight. Akabieh, who

was born to a liberal Jewish family in Texas, said her vocal supports for the underprivileged

transcended their racial differences.

“She once told me these words that I will never forget in my life,” Akabieh said. “I thought this

is the Nour I have always known for—‘Being Palestinian means to stand for those who can't

stand for themselves, to protect what is rightfully yours, and to fight for what you believe until

you can't fight no more.’”

For Zamel, her role as a youth activist for Palestine has just opened a soft prelude. She cautioned

that for the political environment in Palestine to improve, Palestinians must empower women in

their country’s long-running endeavors on the path to freedom and equality, bringing her strong

American female identity to full bearing.

“Palestinian activists today, unfortunately, are predominantly males, because they are often too

afraid of losing their wives. This fear directly contributes to the fact that husbands usually do not

permit their spouses to participate in strikes or voicing their opinions,” Zamel said. “On the other

hand, women have much respect for their men to protest for land rights, so they take a back-row

seat. As a proud American girl with a Palestinian heritage, I wish the society could start with the

liberation of women’s roles. It will be hard, but it’s worth the fight.”