How do we imagine our Return? How do Palestinians, displaced but inseparable from their homeland, dream of going back? Return is not simply reclaiming what was stolen. It is not just the physical act of refugees coming home or exiles finding their way back. Return is deeper: it is the restoration of our being, the revival of our spirit, our land, our sea, our skies, our trees. It is the essence of what makes Palestine alive. Yet imagining the Return has become one of the hardest questions of my life, especially after over a year of witnessing the unimaginable: the deliberate extermination of my people, broadcast for the world to see. It has been over a year of relentless grief, of loss too deep to comprehend. Imagining our Return now, in the face of such destruction, is an act of profound defiance. To imagine the Return, I found myself revisiting past conversations with friends and family. I reopened these dialogues—and initiated new ones—to reflect on the violent transformations imposed upon us throughout the years.
Our very identity, our humanity, has been molded to fit biases that do not reflect every one of us. These distortions erase the truth and the multiplicity of who we are: Palestinian resisting to stay on our land, Palestinian yearning to return, fighting to breathe, to remember, to reconnect, to re-exist; Palestinians inhabiting this world in all our varying views, religions, affiliations, and realities. Most importantly, to Return is not merely to go back to a past state. To expect that Palestinians will return to the point before the Nakba is to dismiss the violent transformations imposed upon us—the fragmentation that has forcibly reshaped how we relate to space, to time, and to each other. It is to ignore how the ongoing Nakba fractured our connections to past, present, and future, imposing different realities upon us and fragmenting our shared sense of belonging. Thus, to Return is not a static or a singular act but a process of reparation, healing, reuniting, and reclaiming the fullness of our existence and the right to define our present and reality on our terms. It is a matter of reviving, and re-becoming, a reclamation of our right as Palestinians to re-imagine new possibilities and new alternatives for the future.
Thinking about Return after over a year marked by exhaustion, paralysis, fear, and the painful questioning of who we have become and how we relate to our surroundings demands a deeper reflection. It calls us to dig deep into the reservoirs of hope, to reach into fragments of our memory to remember who we were, to hold tightly to who we are, and to reimagine who we shall be. It means refusing to lose sight of ourselves, even as we grapple daily with doubt, with trauma, and with the relentless challenge of imagining a future amid all that seeks to erase us.
Return is about reclaiming who we are—both as individuals and as collectives. It is about rebuilding our communities, our relationships that once flourished in harmony with the earth. We have always been rooted in the soil, bound to the hills, valleys, and seas of Palestine. Our grandparents carried the weight of exile in their hands. They spoke of homes they were forced to leave. They never imagined exile would stretch across generations, that they would pass away far from the land they loved, the land that was part of them, as they were part of it.
The ‘physical’ right to return is only one part of the story. Return is about healing. Healing our people, our earth, and our soul. It is when the waves of the sea flow freely again, unblocked by walls or unpoisoned by weapons. It is when the burnt olive trees sprout new life, and the soil, no longer bearing the weight of tanks, is taken care of by one of its own. Return is the undoing of violence—tearing down walls, dismantling barbed wire, destroying sniper towers. It is about reconnecting our encircled cities and villages, walking our valleys without fear, picking za’atar and sage without it being a crime. It is about (un)criminalizing our very existence, healing the scars imprinted on our peripheral vision. The act of Return restores our gaze: instead of seeing walls, snipers, rifles, and barriers, it allows us to reconnect to our earth, to see the mountains, the sea, the sun—the sky unbroken.
The act of Return is the restoration of our relationships: redefining how we relate to the land, to one another, and reclaiming our space and time. It is a reclamation of life in its fullest sense, where we walk freely on our soil, breathe deeply of our air, merge with our sea and rebuild the bonds fractured by violence and occupation. It is the moment when the sea welcomes our fishermen, when the mountains cradle our footsteps, when the skies hum with the freedom of the Palestine Sunbird instead of drones. It is the reawakening of the wholeness we have never stopped yearning for.
It is a reappearance in the spaces from which Palestinians were deliberately erased—a reclamation of the writings, discourses, and histories that were distorted or silenced. It is the reemergence of our narratives, our words, and our lives in their full complexity and humanity.
Return is far more than the legal terminology of refugees. It is the return of our spirit, the return of our aura, the revival of our community. It is the unburning of our trees, the undying of our children, and the unmuting of our voices. It is when the souls of those returning are reunited with the souls of those who sacrificed for this moment. It is the culmination of our defiance against being molded, incarcerated, or exterminated.
This may sound romantic, but without the romanticism of hope, who are we? Hope is not merely a dream, it is a necessity, a way of living that propels us forward amidst the most incomprehensible. Yet, to think concretely, we must also confront how the Israeli occupation has manipulated both the physical and experiential dimensions of our space and time, creating “alienated subjects,” distorting how we experience and relate to our own existence. This manipulation is manifested differently in our forcibly fragmented physical and imagined realities. Some of us are confined to collapsing infrastructures, trapped in a state of permanent limbo—a so-called permanent “home” that merely relabels our existence. Some of us grow up stateless, living in the shadows of the very places where we were born, subjected to countless restrictions on how, where, and when we can live and exist. Our lives are confined to a single, inhabitable patch of land, stripped of dignity and freedom.
The act of Return must also acknowledge the varying intensities and implications of the occupation on our different communities across the three generations. How can Return undo the suffering of the first generation and the generations that followed? How can it reconfigure our lives, granting us the right to inhabit this world freely and with dignity? So, what does Return truly mean? Is it truly a pivotal moment, or is it merely an organic, natural outcome of a much larger change that we must all strive for? An end to occupation and oppression, the dismantling of apartheid walls, and the end of violence. Return demands reparations and justice—not “a dialogue of peace” that grants impunity to those complicit in a decades-long cycle of violence and injustice.
Imagining our Return, therefore, requires more than envisioning a physical homecoming. It necessitates a fundamental transformation—a collective effort to end the structures of oppression and violence that have fragmented our lives for generations. It means rebuilding not just our homes, but our very existence, ensuring that future generations can live freely and with dignity. It is about creating a world where Palestinians can exist fully and freely, without the shadows of past and present violences looming over them.
Return is freedom, a word often constrained by state structures and often misunderstood as mere “self-determination,” but one that transcends those confines. It is freedom that courses through the very veins of existence, water quenching the thirst of the land, enabling it to flourish and give back.
This is the same freedom resounding in the voices of tens of thousands of protesters around the world, simply refusing to die. It is a freedom that revives the souls of those we have lost —the journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, the prisoner Waleed Abu Duqqa, the thousands of doctors; and the countless children whose laughter was stolen—each of the hundreds of thousands of souls lost, including those we know of, and those who are still struggling under rubbles; waiting to be found. It is their spirits that breathe life into our struggle reminding us that Return is Freedom.
In the face of such loss, the words of a grieving grandfather, whom we recently lost, mourning his granddaughter at the outset of this ongoing genocide, resonate deeply with all of us…
انتي روح الروح You are the soul of the soul. ■