The dabke of resilience: Why Gazans dance amidst the ruins

Palestinian rootedness

The people of Gaza have given their answers throughout for those willing to listen. "We want nothing but to return to our homes, even if they are destroyed," said one. "We will live on the ruins of our houses," said another. "I just want to sleep in my own home," said a third. 

They were expressing their feeling of longing and belonging that still fills their hearts and consume their thoughts throughout the harshest and bitterest of displacements. It could be seen in the faces of those returning on foot: an immense yearning, mirroring a deep pain after being uprooted by fire and steel. 

While the occupation was busy destroying their homes on the ground, those same homes were being reconstructed within the hearts of their owners. They transformed their temporary shelters (often tents) into metaphors for the homes they had lost. This pattern extends to all aspects of Palestinian life since 1948. 

Neither the Israelis nor the international community has ever fully grasped that this rootedness is the essence of the tragedy of the Palestinian Nakba. 

Palestinian culture

Palestinians have preserved their dialects—the ones they inherited from their parents and, in turn, passed down to their own children—so faithfully that it remains possible to determine a Palestinian's place of origin simply by the way they speak, whether meeting them in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, or in Europe. 

Few peoples celebrate a dish or dessert as passionately as an exiled Palestinian. Every dish carries an entire history within it. The act of eating is more than a moment of closeness, warmth, and joy; it is a ritualistic revival of something unique, something that exists nowhere else. 

When a Palestinian wants to gift a friend an unforgettable experience, they will prepare musakhan (roasted chicken baked with onions, sumac, allspice, saffron, fried pine nuts and taboon bread), qalaya (fresh tomatoes cut and fried with onions, garlic, green peppers, olive oil, and spices), or maqluba (meat, rice, tomato, cauliflower, potato and eggplant/aubergine), the latter evoking an irresistible sense of nostalgia.

For decades, the Israeli occupation has treated Palestinians as intruders, mere 'Arabs' who could simply 'return to where they came from' or assimilate into the wider Arab world. The American perspective, embodied today by Donald Trump, offers a slightly different view. For him, you don't stay somewhere that lacks even the most basic conditions for life; it is only natural, then, to leave in search of safety elsewhere.

Refugees and prisoners

Perhaps the crux of the issue lies in a simple yet fundamental truth: that the majority of Palestinians—both within Palestine and in exile—remain refugees or displaced persons, a reality perpetuated by Israeli actions. 

Today, Israeli attempts to dismantle UNRWA (the UN agency established to address the Palestinian refugee crisis) reflect a misguided belief that eliminating it will somehow erase the internationally recognised status of Palestinian refugees or nullify their right to return to the lands from which they were expelled.

The sight of northern Gaza's residents returning en masse should have shattered that belief. Likewise, the scenes of people welcoming freed Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. Those scenes evoked mixed reactions, given the immense price Gaza has paid, not least in human lives.

The Israeli narrative accuses Palestinians of devaluing life and embracing death, yet from the very beginning, Palestinians have embodied their dreams of return, of statehood, and of freedom through the cause of their prisoners. Just like the realities of exile and displacement or the daily ordeal of crossing Israel's checkpoints, the issue of Palestinian detainees serves as a constant reminder of life under occupation.

The staggering number of Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails under harsh conditions and facing arbitrary charges in a state of legal ambiguity means that nearly every Palestinian household is directly affected by this issue. 

Some prisoners, such as Abdullah Barghouti, Marwan Barghouti, and Ahmad Sa'adat, have attained symbolic national status, but most are ordinary men and women, sons and daughters, neighbours and friends. Israeli imprisonment is now an experience shared by the entire Palestinian people.

Dancing the dabke

Hence their celebration of those released. They see themselves and their loved ones reflected in them. The freedom of one is felt as the freedom of all, just as the return of one person to their destroyed home represents the collective return of an entire people to their homeland.

Another force driving displaced Palestinians back to the north is the need to search for loved ones they left behind, whose fates remain unknown. If they can be found, those returning will recover the bodies and give them a proper burial, a fundamental right that Palestinians in Gaza have been denied for months.

The urgency of their return is therefore driven by a desperate need for news and for knowing, as well as by a longing to see their families and friends face-to-face after months of separation, with limited means of communication. 

Weary and burdened both by loss and pain, Palestinians have returned to their homes and neighbourhoods, haunted by anxiety over the future, yet still, they smile, sing, and dance, including the dabke, a Levantine folk dance performed at weddings and other joyous occasions.

At heart, they are celebrating their survival, which for months felt unlikely. Many will have felt, at times, that death was preferable since it would hasten their end. There can be few greater testaments to their love of life than the image of their return. 

Now, survival itself has become a cultural marker, a new chapter in the Palestinian story of resilience—the story of their unyielding grip on their land, their dream of statehood, and their undying pursuit of freedom. This story still has some way to go. We are nowhere near its final chapter.