Over the past year, Palestinians around the world have lost countless loved ones and beloved parts of their culture – olive groves and family farms, historic mosques and churches, universities and scholars, books and poets — in Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
Despite multiple Israeli violations of the long-awaited ceasefire that came into effect in January, Palestinians remain devoted in their struggle for liberation through practicing a core cultural value and socio-political concept known as sumud.
“Sumud is an Arabic word for steadfastness,” explains Nehal Altarhuni, an organizer with the Canadian Palestinian Social Association in London, Ontario. “We see our sumud…not just in being able to resist occupation and ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine, but we also see it in the way we live life.”
For the last 76 years, armed resistance is one of many ways Palestinians have resisted the Israeli occupation. Armed resistance has long been used by colonized peoples to protect the sovereignty of their lands and their right to self-determination, which is permitted under international law.
But while the Al-Qassam Brigades and other groups have been at the frontlines in resistance, women in Palestine and across the global diaspora have been the backbone of sumud in their ongoing fight for a free Palestine.
According to researchers at An-Najah National University and Cardiff University, sumud emerges from the prolonged experiences of occupation and displacement faced by Palestinians since the creation of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent wars in occupied Palestine, such as in 1967.
Sumud was central to the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s efforts in 1978 to encourage Palestinians to remain on their land, resist uprooting, and preserve their identity. It represents both passive endurance and dynamic resistance, rooted in cultural, social, and political resilience strategies developed in response to chronic adversity and military occupation.
Even for refugees and exiles living abroad, Altarhuni says, sumud is the string that ties her to her family, faith and resistance against the Israeli occupation.
“We believe our culture is sumud,” she tells Analyst News. “Our art is sumud. Our joy is sumud. Being able to spend time with our families is sumud — especially when the occupation and the Israeli apartheid is keen on destroying exactly that.”
The harrowing videos and pictures coming out of Gaza in the past year coupled with updates from Altarhuni’s family in occupied Palestine have made it incredibly challenging for her to focus on her daily life.
“This strong feeling of despair and helplessness is definitely the strongest feeling I’m feeling right now,” Altarhuni says. “I do have to hang on to my faith to help me through this.” But she sees a dim spark of hope in the thousands of people from different faiths and backgrounds that have come together in her city and beyond to rally for a free Palestine.
“There are so many new people that have not been aware of what’s happening in Palestine that are now aware,” Altarhuni says. “Because deep down, humans are humans, and one of the strongest emotions or desires for any human to have is the desire to be free.”
Palestinians have been fighting for recognition and an end to settler colonialism long before Hamas coordinated a large-scale attack against Israeli settlers in 2023. But with mass protests mobilizing over the last 15 months and increased attention to the historical injustices Palestinians have faced, they are finding more and more allies.
Layan Ismail, who grew up in Nablus in the occupied West Bank and is now studying law at Ontario’s University of Windsor, says she threw herself in pro-Palestinian clubs, events and protests as soon as she moved to Canada in 2009.
“Before Oct. 7, people were still very scared,” Ismail says. “Palestine was not an issue, Palestine was not a human rights issue. But now there’s a lot more people joining us.”
Ismail has been an advocate alongside other students across North America that have been pushing for universities to publish anti-Palestinian racism materials, annually disclose direct and indirect public fund investment and divest under human rights frameworks.
The University of Windsor is the only university in Canada thus far that has met the demands of pro-Palestine student protesters. Yet, for Ismail, the ceasefire is just the start of a new phase towards the struggle for liberation.
“All I can think about is the disabled Gazans with visible amputated limbs or the invisible wounds of a childless mother who lost her children in the genocide. Do we celebrate [the] ceasefire?” says Ismail. “I know what freedom looks like and if I’m not free, then nobody else is free.”
Chantelle Paiu became a mother the same year the Gaza genocide began. Paiu’s son, George, was six months old in October when Israel began its carpet-bombing of the Gaza Strip. Worried for her loved ones and her people, she thought of the thousands of pregnant Palestinian women in Gaza surviving, giving birth, cradling and feeding their newborns under the constant bombardment of Israeli missiles.
“In my first year of mothering, it was during a genocide of my people…It was bittersweet,” Paiu says. “We always spoke of [Palestinian] children but now [I’m] seeing it as a mother. Those are my children. Those mothers are my sisters. Those grandmas are my tetas. It adds a whole new layer of experience.”
She is one of the organizers with Fredericton Palestine Solidarity in New Brunswick, Canada and has been advocating for protecting Palestinian children.
“[Sumud is] our resilience, our steadfastness, our ability to maintain our lives with integrity but as well show that we will not stop resisting,” Paiu says.
Paiu’s parents were born and raised in a predominantly Palestinian Christian town in the north of occupied Palestine. Many of her aunts, uncles and cousins refuse to leave the area despite the ongoing threat of Israeli bombardment.
One of her cousins is an architect pursuing her PhD thesis on settler colonialism and engaged in various restoration projects for places that have been demolished. She and other family members send Paiu updates about the ongoing events in their town, once even sharing images of a huge crater left in the ground from an Israeli bomb next to their house.
Although Paiu wasn’t raised in Palestine, she has been able to visit occasionally. People in the town know her because of her family roots to the land.
“Our existence is resistance,” Paiu says. “I will always know Palestine to be that feeling of home, even though it was never home to me, and that’s something that no settler will ever take from me.”
The ceasefire that Palestinians around the world spent over a year fighting for is already in shambles. On the second day, Israel violated it by killing a child. It also launched a massive offensive in Jenin, backed by the Palestine Authority, in which at least nine Palestinians were killed and 90 were abducted.
“There is still so much work to do and still so much to grieve,” Paiu says. “The doubt in my heart is still strong, but seeing the world’s opinion about Israel has been hopeful.”
