For my final project, I want to map the life of Sayed Kashua, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who, in light of the war in Gaza in 2014, decided he must leave Israel and migrate to America. Kashua, a comedic writer known for his TV show Arab Labor, grew up in Tira in the Triangle region of Israel. Before leaving the country several years later, Kashua moved to Beit Safafa -- a village part of East Jerusalem -- and later moved to a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem. He attended boarding school in Jerusalem as well as college at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he studied sociology and philosophy. Several years later, Kashua decided to move with his family to America after accepting teaching positions in Illinois in light of the war in Gaza. My map will trace his movement within Israel and later out of Israel to America.

To me, Kashua represents an important figure in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and blurs the lines of identity within the conflict. A Palestinian writer raised in Israel with Israeli citizenship and a writer in Hebrew, Kashua exemplifies how the conflict is not black and white, and helps take down the binary we so often see in the media. He complicates the complex terms of migration, as his migration was both chosen and forced after living within the conflict for several years.

In sharing Kashua’s map and story, I hope to show the rest of the class the dangers of viewing the conflict as a binary as well as continuing to show the complexities behind migration experience and the terms we have been discussing throughout the semester. Many of the Palestinian figures we have read and will read write about their experiences of forced migration, and while Kashua's migration is not forced in the way that we immediately think about the term, I believe that Kashua’s complicated identity holds an important role in the Palestinian experience and the Palestinian diaspora.