Saeed Teebi

“When I call for Palestine to be free "from the river to the sea," it is not a mere slogan, it is a demand that is deeply personal. My family is from Jaffa and its environs, which via violent colonization and dispossession came to be located in modern-day Israel. Palestinians, whether they come from the West Bank, Gaza, or from exile like me, are barred from going to live in that area. Any Jewish person anywhere in the world may come to live in the land of my ancestors, but I cannot. It is an unfairness to intense that it sears me to think about it. For me, the right of return - specifically the return there, to Jaffa, that specific plot - is as personal a right as there exists in the Palestinian cause. I've imagined it so many times I feel almost pathetic. And Jaffa is only my particular cynosure. Other exiled Palestinians dream of ancestral towns and villages everywhere in pre-1948 Palestine, which stretched from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. When we mention those bodies of water, we are telling you what we want for ourselves and our future.”
― Saeed Teebi, You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times