Transgenerational trauma and collective resilience: A qualitative analysis of the experiences of settler-colonial violence among three generations of Palestinian refugees

Abstract

Background:

Palestinian people have endured collective dispossession and social suffering for 74 years from the so-called Al-Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe).

Aims:

The present exploratory work sought to analyze experiences of settler-colonial violence over three generations of Palestinian refugees.

Methods:

Forty-five participants (Mage = 44.45; range 13–85) were recruited via snowball sampling and interviewed to explore their understanding of transgenerational and collective trauma. Interviews were analyzed through thematic content analysis, resulting in four emerging themes distributed among the three generations.

Results:

The four themes encompassed (1) The impact of Al-Nakba, (2) Hardships, challenges, and quality of life, (3) Coping strategies, and (4) Dreams and hopes for the future. The results have been discussed using local idioms of distress and resilience.

Conclusions:

The Palestinian experience of transgenerational trauma and resilience depicts a portrait of extreme trauma and endurance that cannot be reduced to the mere nosographic collection of Western-informed psychiatric symptoms. Instead, a human rights approach to Palestinian social suffering is most recommended.

Keywords

Transgenerational trauma collective resilience settler-colonial violence Palestinian diaspora social suffering

Introduction

In the contemporary world, most social conflicts are marked by a collective historical trauma, in our description best recognized as the transgenerational psychosocial impacts of colonization and the structural and cultural violence against indigenous populations (Kirmayer et al., 2014). This form of collective suffering occurs when the whole community agonizes and is exposed to ongoing cruelty, besides traumatic experiencing, and when trauma inhabits the fabric of the family, community, and the entire society for generations waiting for healing through storytelling and remembrance (Audergon, 2004; Rinker & Lawler, 2018).

Transgenerational trauma has been studied in victims of mass violence, such as the Holocaust (van Ijzendoorn et al., 2003), the Rwanda genocide (Roth et al., 2014), or victims of torture and extreme traumas (Daud et al., 2005). For example, Native Americans in Canada who were coerced into Indian special schools experienced traumatic depressive symptoms. Bezo and Maggi (2015) reported that Ukrainian children displayed signs of trauma because of the influence of their parents’ negative emotions and ineffective coping strategies, which they experienced as a consequence of the 2014 war.

The Palestinian–Israeli conflict persists as a chronic and intractable question in our contemporaneity since the Al-Nakba (the catastrophe) occurred 74 years ago; over 700,000 Palestinians of Arab origin fled or were expelled from their homes and became refugees living in temporary camps located in neighbor countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Syria besides the internally displaced population who moved in the area, the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Sa’di, 2002).

During the 1948 Arab/Israeli war, till now, Palestinians have been exposed to ongoing military occupation, experiencing cumulative traumatic events because of repeated invasions, detentions, land confiscations, house evictions and demolitions ordered by the Israeli army (Manna, 2013; Veronese et al., 2017, 2018).

Palestinian refugees have been brought up in a collective trauma narrative regardless of their age. Their experience from the al-Nakba reshaped the Palestinian master narrative via anecdotes and storytelling. It evoked a sense of unrest and dispossession in the second and third generations of refugees (Atallah, 2017; Mahamid, 2020). Also, modern media kept the collective and transgenerational trauma current in Palestinian lives through news, movies, programs, shows, and stories presented via social media and broadcasting (Somasundaram, 2014). Constantly recalling collective traumatic events, the ongoing Israeli occupation, and the poor and unsafe living conditions cause diffuse physical and psychological distress among the population (van Heemstra et al., 2020 ).

The experience of refuge and the ongoing spiralling structural violence affecting Palestinian everyday life might cause multiple consequences on mental health that depict a Palestinian portrait of psychological functioning far from Western diagnostic, individualistic and interpretative frameworks.

Feelings of helplessness and grief are connected to the historical sense of dispossession and uncertainty that Palestinians endured for generations. Anxiety, depression, and somatizations mirror the ongoing traumatic reality characterizing the occupied Palestinian territories. Furthermore, shame and anger are the symptomatic expressions of humiliation and loss of dignity among the civil population. Finally, bereavement and losses are existential conditions and constellate adults, youths, and elders’ lives (Thabet et al., 2016).

Mahamid (2020) found that children in Palestinian camps in the West Bank suffer from poor quality of life, and they identified the Nakba as a loss experience. Moreover, Wilson et al. (2021) found that Palestinian refugee children in the West Bank were at risk for mental disorders and psychosomatic burdens. Poverty, violence and marginalization have been studied as risk factors. In addition, the military occupation of the refugees’ homeland, unfavorable school conditions such as overcrowding and lack of resources, poor living conditions, and specific incidents of loss and traumatic experiences were found to contribute to feelings of sadness among Palestinian refugee children in the West Bank refugee camps and Gaza Strip (Mahamid & Berte, 2020; Veronese et al., 2015). Additionally, it was discovered that adolescents inhabiting Palestinian refugee camps exhibited a higher prevalence of depressive-like symptoms than those living in cities, towns, and villages. This disparity could be explained not simply by poverty, over-population and intense political, social and psychological components but also by the deep-rooted consequences of war, passed down from over 50 years of Palestinian history (Giacaman et al., 2007; Thabet et al., 2014).

A qualitative study on the earliest generation of refugees who had encountered massacres in ’48 and ’67 reported that the respondents felt they were facing the risk of death and were exposed to challenging environmental conditions. They reported being tortured in different forms and having seen the destruction of their houses. After over 50 years, they reported having trouble sleeping, as they could not shake off the images and thoughts of the Nakba. They have disturbing dreams related to expulsion, difficulty breathing, increased heartbeat, dizziness, and dissociative symptoms (Dayyeh et al., 2018).

Palestinian refugee adolescents are more exposed to problematic psychoactive substance use due to the need to cope with traumatic experiences and social and economic disruption (Damiri, 2020). Dalgaard et al. (2019) revealed that fathers with prolonged exposure to trauma were associated with higher levels of communication, reasons, and meanings regarding the 1948 and 1967 wars in Palestine, while mothers with high exposure to current war trauma were connected with a reduced level of silence. Therefore, facts, communication and meanings were strongly correlated with children’s psychological health and reduced psychological distress, whereas keeping silent did not relate to the children’s mental well-being.

In opposition, Devine Atallah pointed out how Palestinian families expelled just a few kilometres from their original villages could interrupt the transgenerational transfer of trauma through harrowing and defiant tales that acted as an intergenerational and collective resilience process analogous to the ones of African Americans and other racialized communities throughout the world (Atallah, 2017).

Moreover, Veronese et al. (2020, 2022) underlined refugee children’s capabilities and survival skills as a source to react to the ongoing trauma and mobilize sources of agency. Namely, children could reshape their surrounding environment, giving sense to their lives through daily acts of love, decency, familial intimacy, and play, reaffirming their rights or resisting for existing (Veronese & Cavazzoni, 2020).

The Marks et al.’s (2020) A-B-C model of ethnic-racial identity assists in grasping the affective, cognitive and behavioral mechanisms the three generations of Palestinians are embracing to counter the transmission of traumas. The model explains how Palestinians can navigate between ease and disease, showing endurance in the wake of transgenerational trauma through storytelling and oral transmission of narratives of sorrow and steadfastness (Giacaman, 2018). Accordingly, Palestinians are constantly engaged in activities of sense-making to anchor their identities to traditional roots and resist dispossession and cultural extractivism.

Moving from the abovementioned perspective and through a transgenerational lens, our work collected stories of collective and social suffering across three generations of Palestinian refugees living amidst ongoing structural violence and discrimination, collective resilience and endurance to an ongoing traumatic reality (Giacaman, 2018).

The study

This year Palestinians mark the 74th anniversary of the al-Nakba, the most devastating tragedy ever befallen them. The 1948 rupture and the ethnic cleansing that followed the Nakba are central to the Palestinian master narrative and collective identity of today (Nur, 2008). Hence, our research takes a qualitative approach to analyze ways of remembering and recounting al-Nakba that could potentially produce transgenerational trauma, as well as remembrance or storytelling practices that foster collective resilience and the skills for survival among three generations of Palestinian refugees who are subject to settler-colonial violence and structural racism. The al-Nakba is a critical historical event that ruptured the Palestinian collective and individual identity continuity. Hence, the current study was designed to explore the following questions. How do three generations of Palestinian refugees narrate al-Nakba? Do traumatic experiences and narratives of first-generation Palestinian refugees transfer over generations and still affect other generations in the West Bank region of Palestine?

Method

Participants

Participants in the study were 45 refugees selected from three generations using convenience and snowball sampling techniques from five Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank of Palestine. In terms of the geographical distribution of participants, (10) were from Balata camp, (7) were from Jenin camp, (10) were from Askar camp, (11) were from Dheisheh camp, and (7) from Nur Shams camp. Twenty-two were women, and 23 were men. Participants were aged between 13 and 85 years. Concerning gender distribution, the number of participants was (9) males and (6) females from the first generation, (8) males and (7) females from the second generation, and (10) males and (5) females from the third generation. The mean age of first generation (Males = 82. 53 years, SD = 9.08; Females = 81.33 years, SD = 7.16), the mean age of second generation (Males = 54.40, SD = 8.65; Females = 52.43, SD = 7.19). Finally, the mean age of the third generation (Males = 16.73, SD = 3.13; Females = 15.33, SD = 3.86).

The study’s inclusion required participants to be: (1) Palestinian, (2) living in a Palestinian camp, and (3) native Arabic speakers.

Instruments and procedures

The data were obtained via semi-structured interviews, and all interviews were administered by local research assistants recruited at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine. The field research staff had received qualitative research method training and conducted the interviews following the research purposes. All participants were native Arabic speakers. The sample was recruited as follows; first, we contacted the representatives of mental health centers (MHC) in each refugee camp explaining the study’s aims, the planned research procedure, the number of participants we intended to interview, and the selection procedure. Then, the contact person in the MHC referred the researchers to the first key informant. Subsequently, a snowball sampling technique was used to identify other participants interested in the research and being interviewed until data saturation.

Participation was voluntary, and interviewees could withdraw from the study at anytime. Furthermore, a counselor (a licensed mental health professional) was available to support any participant who might become distressed during the interview. Besides, all participants were provided with contacts in the mental health services to seek help if symptoms arose subsequently to participate in the study. The IRB of An-Najah University approved the study prior to the commencement of data collection.

Data Analysis

All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed in Arabic by a mother-tongue researcher. Thematic content analysis (TCA) was applied to the written transcripts to identify the key themes emerging from the transcripts. In addition, a bottom-up, data-driven textual analysis was used to extract categories from the raw data (Parker, 2011; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Each interview was closely examined to pinpoint concepts, not just statements containing similar words. The analytical process comprised the following steps: (a) The researchers conducted an open-ended analysis of the participants’ narratives to identify the major research themes; (b) the themes were coded and organized into structured categories; and (c) the categories were discussed and agreed by five judges (Keegan, 2009).

We assessed inter-rater reliability by calculating Cohen’s kappa (.931) (Brennan & Hays, 1992). The kappa statistic indicated 93% agreement with the first author’s original coding and was well over the conventional threshold value for acceptance of 0.80 (Miller et al., 2013).

Results

TCA of the interview transcripts identified four key themes for the three generations of Palestinian refugees, discussed in detail below.

Theme 1 – The impact of Al-Nakba

The first-generation of Palestinian refugees

The al-Nakba and its implications intensified over time and gathered new meanings stemming from the tragic experiences of the Palestinians in their exile. Over 70 years from the al-Nakba have done little to erase the profound direct and indirect impact on three Palestinian generations.

An old refugee who settled in Balata camp reported how Nakba negatively affected all generations who were forcibly transferred from their homeland; he said:

I still remember well how the war took place and how my village was attacked. It was excruciating to leave our big house in Aka; we expected to return to our home within seven to ten days. I cannot describe how painful the refugee experience was; we lived in tents for an extended period. The catastrophe that we faced cannot be described in the exact words. As refugees, we still feel alienated and lost, even after 73 years of that painful experience (84 years male, Balata camp, Nablus).

The experience of statelessness and the injustice that befell the refugees has progressively intensified. An older woman from Jenin camp described what happened in 1948 during Nakba; she said:

When we left my village during Nakba, I was 14 years old. We went out and left everything. I cannot describe the fear and terror we felt at that time. I do not know if we made a mistake when we left our homes, but the destruction of the neighbouring villages and cities and the massacres forced us to go (87 years female, Jenin camp, Jenin).

Therefore, the history of the Palestinian people is deeply marked by a dividing line between the pre-1948 and post-Nakba periods (Manna, 2013).

A refugee woman who lives in Noor Shams camp expressed the feeling of dispossession and sorrow that losing her home and statehood spread over generations.

My body lives here in the camp, and my soul lives in my house in Haifa. The walls of the camp are the only witness to our suffering and the stories of loss and pain experienced by all generations of refugees (83 years women, Nur Shams Camp, Tulkarm).

In clarifying the negative experiences faced by the first generations of Palestinian refugees, a woman from Balata Camp reported:

We have been treated harshly as refugees; other members of society also have a prevalent negative view toward refugees. Our situation has changed from people who own lands to outcasts from the community (85 years female, Balata camp, Nablus).

The second generation

Old or young Palestinians living in refugee camps in Palestine or neighboring countries have grown up amidst a national narrative of transgenerational trauma. Many families in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip hold on to the keys of their long-lost past after 74 years of refugee experience and forced migration three generations later (Mahamid, 2020).

Our study participants conveyed how al-Nakba and its consequences had a detrimental impact on the second generation born in the refugee camps. One refugee who lives in Jenin camp recapped the suffering of the second generations and reported:

Our fathers were forcibly displaced from their lands, and we were born in this camp. You can see the impact of Nakba on every wall and house in this camp. The camp area does not exceed one square kilometer, and we do not own our homes. Poverty, insecurity and fear spread in every corner of this camp (52 years male, Jenin camp).

The confined spaces and the precariousness of the dwellings exacerbated feelings of insecurity and unease. It evoked the first generation shock when Palestinians were expelled from their native homes in ’48 by the Israeli army. Another refugee added,

‘We were born in this big prison, so-called camp. We were also forced to live as strangers in our country. As camp residents, we suffer from arrest, intimidation, and home demolitions more than any other category of Palestinian society’ (55 years female, Askar camp).

Expulsion and isolation are integral to the Palestinian history of loss and exclusion, generating psychological distress, collective grief and sadness.

Another refuge describing the suffering of the second generation mentioned:

We live in a historical tragedy for which the occupation bears responsibility. Plenty of Palestinian refugees were in refugee camps and had to face social disapproval due to their status. They cannot work in many professions that the country’s Indigenous people perform, as happened with the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (48 years female, Nur Shams camp).

Alienation from their own identity and subalternity in confronting colonial powers and the hosting communities’ stigma constrained the Palestinian refugees in a self-perceived sense of being second-class citizens, dispossessed from opportunities and rights.

The third generation

The refugee children taking part in our study narrated the meaning of Nakba, reporting their grandparents’ stories and memories; for example, a child who lives in Jenin camp said:

‘My grandmother told me that in the 1948 war, gangs attacked their homes and expelled them from their land. We live in the camp temporarily and would like to return to our home in Haifa’ (15 years female, Jenin camp).

The rhetoric of return to the homeland is part of the children’s narrative that fosters hope and resistance in the new generation.

Another participant explained:

The Nakba, for me, means the loss of identity, diaspora, and displacement. Indeed, we did not experience the Nakba, but it still affects us today. My grandfather passed away while telling us about our farms and lands in Jaffa (16 years female, Dheisheh camp).

The memory of the al-Nakba deepens the intergenerational connection through the view of continuous collective and social suffering for many years. Still, it affects Palestinian children’s comprehension of their own and collective identity.

Another child added,

‘During the Nakba, I heard many people left their homes and their children behind them. Also, some people came out with the keys to their homes. It hurts me so much when I hear all these stories and the injustice we have been subjected to’ (15 years male, Noor Shams camp).

Indeed, collective memories of sorrow contributed to a current master narrative of dispossession and precarity.

Theme 2 – Hardships, challenges, and quality of life

The first generation

Palestinian refugees continue to experience several adversities and challenges. In the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, 55 years of occupation and the 15-year blockade in Gaza by Israel continue to impact the Palestinian economic, social, and cultural rights (Akram, 2002). However, in the elders’ memory, the Al-Nakba days’ suffering remains vivid and unresolved. One refugee from the Dheisheh camp described the difficulties and challenges faced by the first generation of Palestinian refugees.

‘The most difficult thing that we faced during the Nakba was the loss of some of our family members and their diaspora in many countries till this moment’ (81 years man, Dheisheh camp, Bethlehem).

Another refugee woman who lives in Jenin Camp described the difficulties faced by her family when they left their house in the city of Yafa; she reported:

The most challenging thing we faced when we left our homes and lands was the lack of income and a place to go. Every ten people lived in one tent that could not protect us from the summer heat or the winter rain (81 years female, Jenin Camp).

Another old refugee expressed her feeling about what happened during and after Nakba; she said:

After we emigrated and left our homeland, we became terrified of what might happen to us; it was all mysterious and unknown, and many parents left their children behind while escaping. Some women did not distinguish between their young children, some pillows, and the small bags they carried because they thought they were bringing their children. It was harrowing (79 years female, Balata camp).

Stories of bereavement and terror characterize the Palestinian narrative, as, at the time of the expulsion, everybody recognized there was no safe place to recover and hide during the escape.

The second generation

After being displaced into tents, Palestinian refugees settled in houses and expanded into large families. In spite of the lack of extra land, the refugees experienced a period of growth.

Participants described the difficulties and challenges of living in a camp and the poor quality of life. One male refugee expressed:

‘There is no privacy in the camp. We live in very close quarters, and the infrastructures in the camp are deplorable. The camps also suffer from lawlessness, the spread of drugs, arms trade, and illegal cars’ (53, refugee, male, Jenin camp).

Another refugee stated:

The difficulties and challenges we face in the camp are extraordinary, such as poverty, unemployment, overcrowding, and the complete dependence of our schools on UNRWA, which is suffering from significant financial hardship. Recently, many employees of UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Work Agency] schools, who are from the camps, have been dismissed, which increases the difficulties and problems facing Palestinian refugees (50 years female, Balata camp).

A high population density, lack of adequate setback lines in all directions, small size crowded homes, and inadequate ventilation and sunlight characterize housing. This situation is assumed to be coupled with poverty, unemployment or unskilled labor of the people living in the camp (Mahamid & Berte, 2020).

One refugee clarified the suffering of Palestinian youth who live in camps; he said:

Young people in the camp cannot marry early. For example, after building two rooms for over ten years, I got married. After marriage, I had no job to support my family and children, and the debts are still accumulating today (44 years male, Noor Shams camp).

The third generation

Although they are still young, political and military violence puts children who are constantly at risk of being detained or hurt during demonstrations or military operations at risk.

Most of the children in the camp were either arrested by the occupation forces or were injured in the clashes with the soldiers; children in the camp suffered from political arrest and the cruelty of the occupation more than other Palestinian children (14 years female, Askar camp).

Another child added: ‘Child labour is widespread in the camp, all the children work after school, and many children leave their schools. There is no meaning to childhood in the camp’ (16 years male, Jenin camp).

Prohibitive living conditions and poverty deny children in the camp fundamental rights, from security to the right to education, self-realization and play. One child from Askar camp described the lack of entertainment facilities and the challenges faced by children in the Palestinian camps and revealed:

There is no place in the camp for recreational activities. Children play on the street, as there are no playgrounds or parks. We feel sad seeing children worldwide have all the entertainment facilities we do not have as Palestinian children (15 years male, Nur Shams camp).

Such environmental, economic, and political factors shape children’s personalities, reducing hope and limiting happiness and life satisfaction.

Theme – 3 Coping strategies

In Western societies, coping strategies are often connected to individualistic approaches, where individuals can seek help through professional paths, such as counseling or psychotherapy. In comparison, the coping attitude is more collectivistic within the Global South. Individuals are part of the community, dealing with hardships and getting support within community networks. Thus, family and community support may be more vital in collectivistic societies than professional services offering individual support (Bocco, 2009).

First generation

One refugee in the Balata camp spoke of collective stories of returning to their lost homes as a source of hope that has persisted since the onset of the exile.

During the first days of forced migration, the most comforting thing was our conversations that we would soon return to our homes within days or months. Therefore, we kept our homes keys and official papers for our homes and lands (84 years female, Balata camp).

One refugee stated: ‘One of the most important things that helped us bear the difficulties and crises that we faced is our belief that we will return to our homes one day’ ( 82 years female, Askar camp).

Another refugee described positive coping strategies that helped them overcome the ongoing trauma during and after the Nakba. He reported:

‘Many refugees began to work in the communities where they settled. Most displaced Palestinians had many skills in work and trade, which enabled them to succeed in a big way in the countries where they resided’ (79 refugee man, Ein beet alma camp).

The Palestinian collective pride and endurance were mobilized as a source of survival both practically and emotionally, acknowledging the need for redemption and recognition in the resettlement communities.

The second generation

The Participants in our study reported personal meanings and experiences concerning life in a camp. A refugee man who lives in the Balata camp said.

‘Living in a refugee camp is an existential experience for me. Living under these difficult conditions taught me how to be a self-sacrificing person, patient and solving my problems independently’ (46 years male, Balata camp).

Being a refugee has become a unique experience of life and resistance that symbolizes the right of existence for the Palestinian people exerting patience and endurance in the wake of continuous hardships.

Another participant reported:

Living in a camp taught me how to be patient and courageous, and because of the diverse environment, I have gained a lot of experiences and skills. The camp residents have unique personality traits, characterized by strength and solidity more than the rest of Palestine (41 years male, Askar camp).

Feelings of pride and strength help in mobilizing skills of survival that must be transmitted from generation to generation, feeding steadfastness and resistance despite the worsening living conditions and quality of life.

Third generation

Despite enduring ongoing, widespread social suffering and severely disrupted living conditions, Palestinian children living under structural violence and political oppression engage in various forms of resistance as they strive to maintain good psychological and emotional functioning. In these contexts, children’s resistance and resilience are closely interwoven, arising from various sources, including education, family unity and closeness, playing and sports, socializing with family and friends, political activism and religiosity (Atallah 2017; Veronese et al., 2020).

Our participants reported special and unique characteristics; ‘The children who live in the camp do not get everything they want easily. They are much stronger than the children who live in the cities and villages’ (13-year female, Balata camp).

Another child added,

‘Children in the camps are raised to love their homeland, struggle and prepare to return. The camp walls are full of stories of martyrs, prisoners and struggle. Children of the camp have a greater awareness of the Palestinian cause, and the conditions in which they live make them more solid’ (16 years male, Jenin camp).

Accordingly, the participation in the civil resistance made Palestinian children situated as political actors directly involved in the Palestinian struggle for existence, resisting personal and collective psycho-emotional break-downs.

Theme 4- Dreams and hopes for the future

First generation

Hope has been identified as a critical healing component for those who have experienced historical trauma, distress, and loss. Hope, which includes a positive expectation for the future and self-evaluation of a capacity to achieve success, may significantly strengthen a refugee community’s resilience and social well-being.

Our participants described hope for the future in different manners. A refugee woman reported:

‘I wish to return to live in our house in Haifa, even if it is the last day of my life. My hope in this life is to return and be buried after my death in the land of our ancestors’ (85 years female, Asker camp).

Hope has been related to coping and overcoming the distress of living under uncertain and painful life circumstances (Afana et al., 2020; Mahamid, 2020).

Another old refugee mentioned, ‘I hope that our problem as refugees will be somewhat solved and we return to our homes. I hope our children do not suffer as it happened with their fathers and grandfathers’ (79 years male, Jenin camp).

The second generation

Our participants expressed hopeful thoughts reflecting the belief that they can find pathways to desired goals and become motivated to use them. For example, one refugee reported:

‘I dream my children will continue their education, live a good life, and not face the same difficulties. I also hope that the economic situation in the Palestinian camps will be improved and see people living with dignity and peace’ (51-year male, Askar camp).

Theories on hope also point to interconnections between mastery, increased self-esteem, and the ability to plan for and find solutions as core experiences in developing and maintaining hope. To hope is a health-promoting process, which has to do with the belief to reach our own goals; there are routes to realizing these goals (Storsve et al., 2012).

The camp is an essential part of our Palestinian national identity, but this does not mean that the conditions in the camps are not tragic. It is unfair for the landowners to live in camps and for strangers to live in our homes. We want to return to our homes and our land. There was also a need to improve the conditions of Palestinian camps during this time (57 years female, Dheisheh camp).

One refugee described his hope for the future and the right of return. He reported:

‘I was born here, and the camp is where I cannot leave it to live anywhere in the West Bank. When I return to my hometown, Sabbarin village near Haifa, I can leave it only in one case’ (47 refugee man, Jenin Camp).

The third generation

A high dream is a term employed to portray an experience of something excellent and elevated that one endeavors to reach in life and inhabit, living it as an exemplary idea or loftiest aspirations of themselves. Simply, it may do or live a feeling of happiness, optimism, and satisfaction. For example, a high dream of Palestinian refugees is living in freedom and dignity in their historical homeland. In other cases, such a high dream might be something children do not even intentionally think about (Mindell, 1995).

Through self-determination and education, our participants narrate their hopes and dreams regarding personal and collective redemption. One child reported:

‘I have a dream to continue my education and become a physician so that I can treat people in the camp; they deserve help’ (14 years female, Askar camp).

Another child added: ‘When I grow up, I hope to be able to travel to all countries of the world. In Palestine, we cannot travel because of the checkpoints and occupation’ (15 years female, Jenin camp).

Sense of imprisonment and suffocation is controlled by a reverie of traveling and discovering the world.

One refugee child from Balata camp explained the dreams of Palestinian children living in camps; he stated:

‘As a Palestinian child who lives in a camp, I have a dream to live in peace like the rest of the children in the world; we also dream of having playgrounds, entertainment venues and swimming pools same as children who live in cities and villages’ (15 years female, Balata camp).

Discussion

The present work explored the transgenerational trauma and collective resilience of three generations of Palestinian refugees through the memory of the al-Nakba. Three generations share a collective memory of dispossession and exile from historical Palestine that keeps alive the narrative of the displacement from the native al-Nazha (homeland) as a traumatic historical turning point directly experienced by the first generation, transmitted until the third generations, and shaping the ongoing diaspora within and across historical Palestine (Hollander, 2016). Memories of the forced migration mirrored in the three interviewed generations through idioms such as faji’ah (the calamity) and jalwa (to transfer) are shared in the Palestinian narrative of collective trauma and reinforced by the ongoing experience of settler-colonial violence that the population in the occupied territories continue to endure from 74 years (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2014). Thus, the collective suffering transmitted over generations continues to be reactivated by an ongoing traumatic reality made of imprisonments, forced evictions and expulsion from homes, military and settler-colonial violence that enhance a sense of ektila’ (uprooting) among the population (Barron & Abdallah, 2015; Meari, 2015). The loss of land and the tashtot (diaspora) of Palestinians augment three-generationally the sense of uncertainty and fragmentation of the collective and transgenerational trauma (Hirschberger, 2018).

In the Palestinian memory of the collective trauma, several dimensions that differentiate the individual and social suffering from the Western classification of symptoms emerged from the three interviewed generations. The political implications of the Palestinian suffering appear from the continuous re-experiencing of taghriba (exile’s) memories, the territorial dispossession and homelessness experienced by three generations of Palestinians as a ma’sah (collective tragedy) and musiba (disaster) (Akesson, 2014). Furthermore, the cultural expropriation of historical and native places fostered by settler-colonial violence made Palestinians feel tarheel (expelled) from their ancestor’s homeland (Svirsky, 2021). Finally, the economic dimension of the Palestinian suffering is transmitted over generations through stories of famine experienced during the ’48 disaster and today’s chronic poverty affecting the refugee camps (Afifi et al., 2016; Qato, 2020).

Primary, our stories showed how the face of the trauma in a Palestinian context could not include a ‘post’ phase, as the whole population is entangled in a traumatic reality. Experiences of racialization and cultural cancellation are producing phenomena of social and transgenerationally transmitted suffering rather than individually diagnosable trauma-related syndromes (Giacaman, 2018; Summerfield, 1999). Consequently, the phenomena of resilience and resistance are more collective than individual and allow Palestinians to remain strong and resolute, steadfast in their place, in the wake of an ongoing attempt to uproot them emotionally, psychologically, and culturally. Such endurance is the so-called Palestinian sumud (Hammad & Tribe, 2021). The historical and transgenerational trauma in subjugated and racialized indigenous populations makes up the ongoing trauma when people ‘endure the social suffering of war daily, and the cumulative exposure to political violence [that] gradually transforms the wounds inside into disease and death’ (Giacaman, 2017, p. 357).

On the opposite, the Palestinian people’s history is made of saber (endurance) and nidal (struggle) against the cultural and ethnic cleansing the three generations are experiencing through the violent technologies and necropolitics of the settler-colonial and military occupation (Abujidi, 2014; Daher-Nashif, 2021). Such a sense of pride, patience, and sumud (steadfastness) shapes Palestinian collective resilience. Over the generations, through acts of decency, radical love and communal care, Palestinians empower unique survival skills (Tahamaol si’ab- to deal with difficulties), making resilience a collective form of resistance inherited from the first days of the al-Nakba.

The rhetoric of the refugee camp symbol the right of return to the raja’a (homeland), the keys conserved by the elders and evoking the homes of already destroyed villages enact collective processes of healing and remembrance that foster well-being and amal (hope) over three generations (Atallah 2017; Hart, 2004; Ramadan, 2013).

Storytelling and remembrance activities can be considered and used as familial and community dispositional ceremonies where the three generations of Palestinians gather to perform the cultural resistance against the occupier that, throughout military and cultural dispossession, aims at substituting the indigenous culture with the colonial one (Denborough, 2008). As mentioned in the introduction, the A-B-C life span model of ethnic-racial identity comprises affective, behavioral and cognitive facets that facilitate the transmission of stories and anecdotes as a form of endurance to collective suffering and transgenerational trauma (Marks et al., 2020). Marks and colleagues’ theory points out how meaning-making activities help individuals who have been racialized to integrate affective, behavioral and cognitive experiences in a coherent and politically-situated system of meanings that anchor individuals’ identities despite experiences of subjugation and marginalization. Accordingly, the oral transmission of stories of steadfastness and pain might contribute to navigating the ongoing sense of dispossession and cultural expoliation over the three generations of Palestinian refugees. In so doing, Palestinian agentivity is actively contrasting the effects of ongoing and transgenerational traumas, restoring collectively a sense of identity that can reshape the historical and colonial trauma in a corpus of protective narratives both for individuals and communities (Denborough, 2008).

In sum, hope, sorrow, pride, and loss of dignity are just a few examples of the contrasting emotional experiences three generations undergo in an ongoing traumatic reality where the occupied landscapes reproduce renewed forms of settler-colonial violence and the rupture in the collective Palestinian identitarian narrative over the generations. Concluding, some limitations must be acknowledged and addressed. The small sample size might not have allowed understanding of the interrelations between intergenerational trauma and collective resilience across three generations of Palestinians. Future research must include other geographical areas (e.g. Gaza Strip) and more participants. Alternatively, ethnographic studies that better study geographies of suffering and healing must be promoted and performed.

A glimpse of the author’s positioning is due. One of the three authors is a white, western, and male researcher, while the other two are native Palestinians experiencing the ongoing effects of the occupation. Intersectionally speaking, all authors can share a certain degree of privilege; two of them are men and academicians. Thus, a certain dose of masculine bias might have affected their interpretations. Belonging to different cultural-political backgrounds was thematized and put into the discussion by the authors. Engaging in a culturally diverse conversation might have added value to the work. Namely, the contribution of two native researchers and their subjugated subjectivities as colonized beings allowed us to directly and consistently recognize the non-linear and complex continuum between ease and disease that indigenous Palestinians endure in their struggle for survival.

On the other hand, we engaged in inspiring conversations about subalternity, orientalism in the non-native interpretation of transgenerational trauma, social suffering, collective resilience in the global South, and patriarchal hegemony in science. The lack of non-masculine eyes in the data gathering and analysis phase was acknowledged as a study limitation. Thus, we asked a Palestinian native women researcher (the third author) to engage in the conversation to help challenge a patriarchal envision of science and attempt to decolonize it. In general, diverse research groups are recommendable and can shed light on complex and intersectionally structured contemporary issues.

Conclusion

Multigenerational traumas constellate the Palestinian experience under the ongoing shadow of settler-colonial and military violence. Accordingly, the Palestinian struggle for existence can be compared to the Native and Black Americans in the US, the aboriginal First Nation in Australia, and the Kashmiris in India (Dance, 2010). The primary goal of settler-colonial violence is to cancel and substitute the native heritage with new global cultural forms that foster the capitalistic agenda (Veracini, 2008). As a result, the native population endures extreme forms of trauma that disrupt all dimensions of the private and collective spheres. Western colonization is pervasive and multilayered; it determines complex shades of transgenerational traumatic suffering, only partially captured by psychiatric nosography.

Moreover, western interpretative lenses of the Palestinian social suffering risk underestimating the crucial role of the political antecedents of the Palestinian transgenerational and colonial trauma. The political neutrality of the Western psychiatric intervention reproduces -through passivization, pathologization, and victimization- the form of structural subjugation that contributed to the Palestinian subalternity and psychosocial alienation (Fanon, 2008; Marshall & Sousa, 2017). In effect, mental health humanitarianism in Palestine does not explain the profound political roots of the collective suffering. It focuses on the mere dysfunctional psychological responses, underestimating the healing power of collective actions and advocacy to restore violated human and social rights (Kronick et al., 2021). Transformative collective healing experiences rise from critical consciousness processes that augment three generations’ awareness about their rights and opportunities and the systematic violations of their rights. Accordingly, interventions informed by human rights and human security approaches might be more efficient and effective in answering needs across generations of refugees when operating in a context of structural and settler-colonial violence, such as the occupied Palestinian territories (Diab et al., 2018, 2022; Veronese et al., 2022).

Footnotes

Conflict of interest

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Guido Veronese

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