How one Palestinian family is reconnecting with its roots

A far cry from Gaza amid Israel's continued onslaught in the Middle East, in the central British county of Warwickshire, most famous as the birthplace of English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, one group has been meeting to stand in solidarity with Palestinians.

In the town of Leamington Spa, vigils for the ‘Friends of Palestine' used to take place every third Saturday of the month with around 20 people. But recently 100 people or more have been meeting weekly as the gatherings have expanded to include different towns in the county.

Many members are part of the UK's Jewish community, others are from varied denominations who have rejected Israel's aggression that has killed more than 24,000 Palestinians following Hamas’ incursion into Israel which killed around 1,200 Israelis.

Those with deep familial roots in Palestine, like Derar Badwan, have felt compelled to join them.

He says, the UK authorities have pushed to criminalise pro-Palestinian demonstrations. It comes after remarks from sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman called pro-Palestinian demonstrations "hate marches," resulting in higher police attendances.

Derar, in his early 70s, is a Palestinian who trained as a neurosurgeon and was a consultant in neurorehabilitation. He has been appalled by what he sees as the dehumanisation of his community in the Western Media.

"Are we a different kind of creature? Aren't we human beings?" he tells TRT World.

Personally knowing many of the Palestinians in Gaza, including prominent medical staff providing humanitarian work, Derar has been waking up early with the news and going to bed watching the news on the besieged enclave that has been under Israeli blockade since 2007.

He has been struck by what he sees as a double standard concerning the response towards Ukrainians compared with Palestinians.

"The West is taking the side of the perpetrators of the crimes," he says, underscoring the roles of the British and the US. "You feel really let down when you consider that there's supposed to be human rights."

Derar was born in the West Bank while it was under the control of Jordan, a few years after the 'Nakba' or catastrophe - when Zionist militias forcibly displaced some 750,000 Palestinians to establish the State of Israel in 1948. Palestinians have experienced ethnic cleansing, dispossession and apartheid in the aftermath.

"Heaven's sake, it's been 75 years, and nobody has said once to Israel, you can't do this. This is not right. Nobody does (tell them). It is colonialism," he says.

Derar’s immediate family were farmers who lived in the village of Annaba, also known as Innabah or Beth-Innabah. It lies 7km east of the city of Ramleh and a similar distance from the city of Lydda. Although the area was hallmarked as part of the Arab state in the 1948 partition plan, he says Jewish militias and the 3rd battalion of the Israeli army forcibly evacuated most of the villages in that area, culminating in the Lydda massacre in July 1948. The village was bombed and demolished by the Yiftach Brigade. All that remains of that village he says are some homes and some tombs, including those of Hassan Badwan and Ayish Badwan (Derar’s Great Grandfather and his great uncle.)

As a result of the forced expulsion, Derar says many Palestinians were thrust into a life of poverty, ending up in camps. The dispossession was shared with many family members including his grandparents, his own parents and uncles.

As a young boy, Derar would visit his grandmother, recalling how his grandmother set up a swing inside the tent for him and his young cousins to play on.

For Palestinians, he says the Nakba also resulted in money becoming "very tight." Many lost their sources of employment and income, becoming dependent on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugee (UNRWA) for handouts.

The dire political and economic situation in the early 1950s he says forced his father, Ali Badwan to seek work overseas.

As a qualified teacher who established Annaba's first school in the 1930s, Ali later secured a job as headmaster in Kuwait. A year after, Derar, his mother, three brothers and sister also moved to Kuwait.

He says Ali’s new earnings enabled him to buy land to build a family home in Ramallah.

A year after the family moved to Kuwait, tragedy struck as Derar’s mother died prematurely at 27 years old in an accident at home with her youngest child.

To support the family, Ali’s sister, Derar’s aunt and her son moved to live with them. Derar says the whole family owes a lot to their aunt who acted as a mother and housekeeper.

Ali did not remarry. He remained single for 10 years, raising the children and taking on the role as a sole caregiver for his young family.

"To date, my best memories were when we went back in the summer to Ramallah - I was a teenager, really," Derar says, recalling time spent between June and September away from Kuwait's sweltering heat in the cooler mountains of Palestine where his father bought a piece of land and built a house.

It often involved helping with family chores, like heading to the market and butchers for food.

Sixty years later, he calls the experiences his "education" and says it gave him his "best memories," reconnecting with his community and lands.

"To date, these memories are in my mind very, very strong," he says.

While his three brothers went to Pakistan, Egypt and England to study overseas, Derar headed to a university in Basra to train as a doctor - his dream from a young age.

"I qualified in Iraq, worked with the Palestinian Red Crescent for a couple of years in Lebanon and then worked for a short period back in Kuwait," says Derar, who had set his sights on switching to surgery despite working in paediatrics at the time.

It resulted in him taking up the opportunity to head to the UK. After the 1967 war, Israel had occupied the West Bank, meaning Derar could not return to the family home in Ramallah.

In Manchester, Derar came into contact with different organisations standing in solidarity with Palestine, which had grown after notable Israeli attacks on Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

After settling in the UK, Derar eventually married Janet Key, a nurse from Hull.

Gaining a fellowship in surgery, Derar worked at top hospitals across England and trained as a neurosurgeon.

By the late 80s, he was experiencing difficulties in advancing his career amid restructuring of the rehabilitation services in Britain. As such, Derar became a lecturer in one of only two Professorial rehabilitation units in the UK.

From the early 90s, now with 4 children (Laith, Tarik, Harith and Faris), each summer he would look to reconnect with his family in Jordan. On a couple of occasions he managed to cross the borders into the occupied Palestinian territories, reliving similar experiences from his youth.

A summer with family

His son, Faris Badwan, an artist and vocalist with the Horrors, recalls how significant the trips were for Derar. From revisiting Derar's boyhood home, the trips often involved journeys crammed inside his grandfather Ali's old Volvo in what he describes as the unrelenting heat.

Derar would run "death-defying" routes across the mountains, searching for memorable locations like the Dead Sea, Jerash and Ajloun.

When visiting the occupied territories the family travelled to different holy sites in the West Bank.

"My dad was determined for us to see these different places, mosques in isolated parts of the country. My brothers and I hated the trips through the mountains because we were terrified the entire time," laughs Faris, “the paths were steep and a Volvo estate isn’t exactly an all-terrain vehicle.”

Often spending the long summer months in the Middle East, Faris says the trips brought him closer to his own Palestinian roots, describing them as “a central part of who we are”.

“With our Palestinian family having moved around the world, it feels more important than ever to ensure we're in touch with our culture and our history," he says.

For Faris, part of this also involved learning firsthand about the ongoing occupation in the Palestinian territories.

"When I was a kid, I remember instinctively finding it quite tense around the checkpoints," he says, recalling a "heavy military presence" while visiting the West Bank. “There were long queues of cars in the dust, and very few people spoke. Soldiers with automatic weapons stood at the roadside.”

He remembers Derar's apprehension about whether he could enter Ramallah safely despite now having a British passport.

"We couldn't openly mention the fact that my dad was a Palestinian crossing the border," says Faris, “that in itself is staggering. A Palestinian’s right to set foot in his own country is determined by another state.”

Faris also experienced the Palestinian community in Jordan.

On homes outside the capital Amman, he vividly remembers the pale apricot walls and uneven white-tiled surfaces, flat roofs with clothes hanging out to dry in the 40-degree heat.

Among his Palestinian family living there, he describes different rituals, including prayer, which he says structured a large part of the day.

“I wasn’t religious growing up, but the ritual of it was fascinating to me because it seemed so private and personal. I would watch Tata laying out the rug and, to me, retreat into her own world.”

Faris would play with the neighbouring kids, spending time on an old worksite that they transformed into a football pitch. “We spent weeks playing football every day. Some of the kids were in bare feet. No one’s parents worried about them, it was safe. The guy next door taught me to ride a bike and I would buy falafel from down the road, but then always end up eating it before I got home.”

He says his most vivid child memories are from that time.

“I still remember the smell of the fresh bread when we’d pick it up from the bakery in the morning," says Faris. “I remember how blinding the sun was reflecting off the sandy ground, how hot the car tyres would get and the smell of rubber.”

Sometimes, he would climb his grandad, Ali’s high roof to stare out over Amman at night.

“It was still 30-degree at midnight sometimes. There was a neon temperature sign across from the block of flats. We would all go up on the roof where the washing was hanging, and look out at the city.”

Meals would also bring the community together. Faris says guests would often turn up at short notice and would eat together, describing dinner as a "huge event with 15 people."

Dishes were often prepared by Derar. They typically involved bamya, stewed okra - one of Faris favourite meals, or fasoulia, a tomato-based string bean stew.

"There's a warmth to my experience of Palestinian family life that feels so unique. I think that's part of why this situation - it's almost like our culture is being denied, as if it doesn't exist," he says about October 7.

‘Genocide’

Amid the barrage of Israeli airstrikes levelling Gaza to rubble and killing mostly women and children, the barbarism has made Faris reflect.

"It's easier for people to consider genocide in the past tense. And then when it's happening in the present - it's almost as if some people feel as if it couldn't possibly be happening in 2023. But it is, and we’re watching it live. We’re hearing Israeli politicians regularly making statements that leave no room for interpretation. They want to flatten Gaza,” he tells TRT World.

The devastating images of generations of Palestinians killed by airstrikes have also impacted Faris.

"We’ve seen unimaginable, horrific footage throughout these last months,” he says, “and with starvation and disease spreading, I’m afraid that the worst is still to come. Even if the bombing stops tomorrow, who will rebuild Gaza’s infrastructure?”

Moved by what he has seen, Faris has been lending his weight to PaliRoots, an organisation carrying out vital humanitarian work with the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) that have a 35-year history of directly supporting Palestine with aid for displaced families - from Beit Lahia in the North to Rafa in the South.

The work they do comes as 90% of the population is on the brink of starvation, according to the UK-based anti-poverty group Oxfam.

Many of the institutions that collect knowledge and public records like birth certificates and family histories in Gaza have been bombed, says Faris.

He describes the rich Palestinian culture and heritage as "being erased" amid little pushback internationally.

Derar sees similarities to the process in the late 1940s across Palestinian villages, calling it the “erasure of culture and identity” and “genocide in its most appalling states.”

It follows the inability of the international community to push through a ceasefire after the US vetoed it at the United Nations. It leaves Faris to consider that such international bodies are not representative, nor democratic.

Today Derar’s and Faris’ close family are largely in Jordan and the occupied West Bank while their extended family are scattered across the globe, following the Nakba. Some are in Brazil, Germany, the US, Australia and the UAE.

Colonial history

Faris says he came to learn about the Nakba from a young age, describing it as being at odds with the presented narrative taught at schools in the UK.

"You get a blinkered view of the world living in the West," Faris says. “We are taught that the UK and US are always on the side of good, colonialism is completely brushed over. I don’t see the benefit in teaching such a warped version of history.”

In Britain he also encountered the media bias that he says typically undervalues Palestinian life, influencing people’s outlook.

"Islamophobia has been rife in Western media for decades, and it’s still as prevalent as ever. Palestinian lives (and deaths) are somehow less significant,” says Faris.

“I’m fully aware that I’ve had the privilege to grow up in safety and play music, where so many Palestinian children don’t get the chance to grow up full stop. My Dad was able to become a surgeon. How many Palestinian artists never had the opportunity to develop their craft? Whole generations have had their culture stifled by the occupation.”

Despite this, he says the Palestinian spirit is “unbroken”.

“You see it on live streams, telegram videos, there’s a humbling sense of resolve that people are showing, in the middle of a living nightmare. Journalists (are) risking their lives to document the truth, acts of heroic bravery on a daily basis. These things exist whether or not the mainstream media shines a light on them”.

Faris feels that the tide is turning in terms of public perception but wishes it had not cost thousands of Palestinian lives to reach this point.

“I don’t want to be talking about Palestinians under attack, I don’t want to be talking about western hypocrisy or politics, or war crimes, or any of it. I’d love to talk about all the great things aboutPalestinian culture, community, without any of this weight attached.”