The reality of Palestinian asylum in the Arab countries is witnessing great cruelty due to the economic conditions experienced by the host Arab countries. This feeling can be exacerbated by the feeling of despair prevailing among the Palestinian refugees due to their feeling that the world has forgotten them. The Palestinian-American poet and activist Suhair Hammad describes the situation of the Palestinian refugees saying: Every day you die and the world watches silently, as if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling to the ground.
The immigrants who traveled abroad to find economic opportunities, sent remittances to Palestine and to the refugee camps in order to alleviate extreme poverty after the first years after the 1948 Nakba. These immigrants formed an integral part of the Palestinian diaspora.
Despite the intensification of research on the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, the vast Palestinian diaspora plays a key role in the survival of the Palestinian society, and here the academic Nadia Al-Hajj uses the term diaspora instead of immigrants, due to what this category knows of interaction with globalization and migration that leads refugees to the formation of A sense of belonging and a connection that crosses borders.
In this regard, the Palestinians of the Diaspora worked hard to survive and adapt to the new host countries. What helped this adjustment, despite the bitter reality, are the financial transfers that reach the camps;
It has allowed them to build better homes, get nutrition, send children to school, and get better medical care that neither host countries nor aid agencies are adequately providing.
This is where Professor Nadia Al-Hajj, who specializes in Palestinian refugee issues, is interested in the approach taken by Palestinian refugees in their quest to develop collaborative strategies to solve collective dilemmas in the harsh conditions in which they live;
Especially in the midst of dwindling humanitarian aid and host country support, the findings of this study contradict the claim that online regulation is futile, and Al Hajj instead emphasizes the feasibility and effectiveness of digital networks.
In her work, she highlighted how Palestinian refugees integrate kinship networks and societal norms, and this was later extended through digital platforms to stimulate community cooperation within the Palestinian fabric in refugee camps and outside, employing an approach that combines in-depth interviews, opinion polls, and digital data monitoring, to conclude academic Nadia Al-Hajj. It suggests that “reciprocity” among refugees connected to the Internet generates remittances that finance public goods and services important to the refugee camp community.
Which I sought to disassemble through two books I published;
The first came under the title "Protection Amid Chaos: The Creation of Property Rights in Palestinian Refugee Camps", which was published by Columbia University Press in 2016, and her other important book, which came under the title Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age, University of California Press, 2021.
The last book dismantles the multiple levels of communication that make up the Palestinian cross-border identity, and shows the role of Palestinian norms and values of loyalty, honor, steadfastness and shame, which represent customs and traditions and turn them - through videos, photos, and chat rooms - into a catalytic mechanism for the continued flow of remittances to those in the camps;
Expatriate remittances provide valuable commodities to the camp community, filling the protection gap left by host countries, elite political parties, and international aid agencies.
Academic Nadia Al-Hajj, Associate Professor of Peace and Justice Studies at Wellesley College (communication sites)
In order to bring the contents of this book closer to the Arab reader, Al Jazeera Net interviewed the academic Nadia Al Hajj about the contents of her last book, we leave you with the text of the dialogue:
In the book, you referred to Palestinian networks whose roots extend back to before 1948, where Palestinian villages and families, accustomed to dynamic changes, were adept at managing and solving dilemmas, which extended after the Nakba when the Palestinians moved to refugee camps, and I also pointed out that the family and the village remained They are equally important in keeping the Palestinians alive, can you explain this idea?
The Palestinian people have always been incredibly resilient, even before the Nakba.
Palestinian families and villages have always been accustomed to having different political systems, such as the British and Ottoman presence in Palestine;
Here, society was able to survive and even thrive amid this state of instability that it was witnessing before the time of the Nakba.
For example, I found that the Palestinian people, despite the great distances that separated them before the Nakba, have always been able to place great value on the ties and relationships that bring them together, and the valuation of these relationships extends to the extent of death.
One of the cases belonging to the early 20th century was found in the archives of a Palestinian man who traveled to South America in search of work, and in the midst of his trip he fell ill and died, and here his family chose to hold a funeral to honor his soul despite the distance and their inability to be near his body, where they performed the funeral prayer for his soul, And they shared the wadima meal (provided by the people of the dead), and here the strength of the Palestinian family appears to us, despite the uncertainty and distance that took hold after the Nakba.
before the Internet era;
"Books on the History of Palestinian Villages" were created that were filled with community stories passed down through the generations who lived in refugee camps.
These stories reinforce Palestinian customs and traditions. They exemplify how Palestinians should treat others in financial and commercial interests, how they should help each other in times of need and need, and how they should support each other when faced with collective challenges;
The strength of the family and the village was essential to survival in the refugee camps during the early years.
Today, these communities are using digital spaces, such as the Facebook pages of villages, to share photos and stories that emphasize the customs and traditions of Palestinians, whether living in refugee camps or in the diaspora.
This extended after the Nakba, but before the Internet era;
Created "Books on the History of Palestinian Villages" were filled with communal stories that were passed down through generations and who lived in refugee camps. These stories reinforce Palestinian customs and traditions, they embody how Palestinians should treat others in financial and commercial interests, and how they should help each other each other in times of need and need, and how they support each other when faced with collective challenges;
The strength of the family and the village was key to survival in the refugee camps in the early years.
Today, these communities are using digital spaces, such as village Facebook pages, to share images and stories that emphasize the customs and traditions of Palestinians, whether living in refugee camps or in the diaspora.
How did digital communication generate a vibrant movement in the real world?
How did Palestinian Facebook pages use photos, videos, stories, and collective memory to build connections and reproduce Palestinian standards of honor, shame, and loyalty?
What is the impact of these values on the Palestinian social fabric in the refugee camps?
And how did these values affect the Palestinians in order to urge them to send remittances to camp residents?
At first, when I got to know the Facebook groups for villagers and Palestinians, I thought that these groups were just a place for side interaction;
The digital world is largely an unknown space for most Internet users around the world, allowing one to hide behind an avatar and to express as one pleases, sometimes in very different ways than one would act in the "real world".
However, Facebook pages and groups dedicated to Palestinian villages and families are spaces that invoke a "higher context" within this space.
Indeed, within these spaces everyone knows who you are, your roots and your extensions, they know your grandparents and your great-grandparents, and because this space becomes a known space between them (an unidentified space), people tend to act in ways consistent with the standards of systems of honor, shame, and dignity that they Regulate the real world.
After conducting hundreds of interviews with Palestinians living in the camps and around the world, as well as a poll of the Palestinian Diaspora, and a digital analysis of the data of Facebook pages and groups;
I found that the Palestinians’ involvement in these spaces makes them more likely to send remittances and aid to the people who are still stuck in refugee camps, largely due to the following reasons:
By virtue of their knowledge and awareness that sending them these remittances is the morally correct thing, which must be done based on the accepted concepts according to customs and traditions, and aiming at the necessity of educating Palestinian children whether they live outside Palestine or in refugee camps.
Palestinians were aware that they were viewed by their entire community, because the Internet provided a “high context” space for Palestinians in Facebook village groups;
For example, I learned through one of my interviews that if the payment of a medical bill for an elderly villager is ignored, society will look down upon the one who did not contribute, disavowing one’s societal commitment makes one’s own reputation and that of one’s entire family subject to societal contempt, as Other families may be less likely to do business while refraining from sending remittances to those in refugee camps or even discouraging family marriages.
Given the highly contextual nature of Palestinian digital spaces, and their ability to enforce their rules, online interactions have prompted an influx of real-world remittances.
At a time when many refugee-receiving countries suffer from a lack of funding for relief agencies, or with those who are unwilling to provide financial support to the Palestinians in refugee camps, the influx of diaspora remittances towards the camps is essential to the survival of this community, Especially in light of what these camps are experiencing in light of the Corona epidemic currently.
How do new political ideas flow into the camps despite the presence of what I call “digital gatekeepers” who monitor the social norms that exist within the Palestinian refugee camps as well as among the Palestinian diaspora?
During my in-depth interviews with Palestinian youth who interact highly with one another via digital spaces, I learned that young people have private conversations in chat rooms that allow them to talk about topics that would otherwise be taboo in the real world, even though there is a potential for community rules to be enforced on social pages. Facebook Due to its “high context” nature, private chat rooms provide a space for alternative conversations outside the scrutiny of the rest of society, while challenges to Hamas or Fatah narratives about statehood would be uncommon in the real world. Digital is a lively conversation about organization and societal activism that extends from the bottom up.
Palestinian youth, for example, explore forms of political activism that combine the practices of Palestinian diaspora communities in South America, Europe, and North America with their own living experiences;
For example, Palestinians in Houston and Chicago frequently talk to Palestinians in refugee camps;
They talk about political organization, mobilization, and movement through family, village, and neighboring communities, and Palestinians talk about things like creating lessons on how to document injustice, practices of nonviolent resistance through strikes and silent rallies, and the strategic use of digital media to communicate with journalists.
Although some thought that Palestinians are politically active through the Fatah or Hamas narrative in the first place, the reality proves that there are many youth and community organizations that mobilize and mobilize at the neighborhood, village and family levels, I think this becomes clearer when we observe those organized community actions and efforts that took place in Sheikh Jarrah and other East Jerusalem communities and the transnational solidarity protests unfolding in cities around the world among Palestinian youth in the diaspora.
Here, it can be said that the Internet provides a space through which Palestinians can communicate through their family networks and villages and mobilize them in order to challenge the oppression of the Palestinians.