How it Feels to Be a Queer Palestinian in Exile

This article originally appeared on VICE Belgium.

It’s been over four months since Israel declared war against Hamas in Gaza. For Palestinians living abroad, watching the whole world talk about what’s happening to your people without being able to contribute in any way is incredibly challenging. Reduced to a sad statistic and too rarely invited to speak, Palestinians often struggle to reconcile mainstream representations of their lives with their own, multifaceted identities.

That’s been the experience of queer multidisciplinary artist and architect Hamza Abuhamdia. Born in 1988 in Amman, Jordan, to Palestinians in exile, Abuhamdia has been living in Paris since 2016. His father, Maysara Abuhamdia, a famous Palestinian resistance fighter, was imprisoned twice by the Israeli army before being banished to Jordan. Locked up for a third time in 2002, he died behind bars eleven years later from untreated cancer.

From a young age, Abuhamdia stood out from his brothers for his creative temperament and expressive queerness. As an adult, Abuhamdia never really understood how to introduce himself to others: The son of a Palestinian freedom fighter, or the upper-middle-class queer Arab frequenting queer-friendly bars in downtown Amman? Or maybe the artist in exile, fetishised by a Parisian scene that still struggles to deconstruct its white saviour complex? “Today, I feel the need to remind people that I am Palestinian, I am queer, and I exist,” he says.

Faced with Israel’s pinkwashing of its military campaign – think the Israeli soldier waving a rainbow flag on the ruins of Gaza – the Palestinian queer community has become more vocal in affirming its resistance. “We refuse colonial and imperialist tactics that seek to alienate us from our society, and alienate our society from us, on the basis of our queerness,” stated the Queers in Palestine collective in November 2023.

I sat down with Abuhamdia to discuss how he came to understand his queer and Palestinian identity in a world that keeps trying to define it for him.

VICE: Hi Hamza. Where do your parents come from? Hamza Abuhamdia: From Al Khalil, or Hebron, in the West Bank. My father has been involved in Palestinian resistance since the 60s. He was banished from all Palestinian territories, so he settled in Amman, where I was born and raised. Growing up, I knew very little of his political struggles – he wanted to protect us from all that. I was raised in a bubble.

My mother comes from a relatively well-off background. Her family owned a hammam, and her father had two wives and 17 children. It was really chaotic, but my oldest aunt was one of the first women from Al Khalil to go to university. My mother grew up in these contradictions, between bourgeoisie and tradition.

What do you remember about your childhood? 
My father raised us with science and culture: We watched nature documentaries, Looney Tunes, and Tom & Jerry. He made jokes and did impressions. Well, when he was around, which wasn't often.

I was my mother's little darling. She was a very social, cultured woman, and our relationship was almost like a mother and daughter – it contradicted traditional gender norms. We had our own thing, our inside jokes that no one else understood. Everyone called me little Zaïra because I was her spitting image.

**Have you always felt “different”?
**That’s all I’ve ever known. My parents didn't treat me the same as my other brothers – sometimes they were harshly scolded, whereas I rarely was. When people asked my mother why she treated me like that, she would answer: "It's Hamza, that's it!" I was her accomplice, her friend, her confidante, her soulmate, almost.

**And how was it with your father?
**I think he was a bit scared of me. I was “team women” and made fun of toxic macho culture. It was my mother and me against the boys, always.

As a teen, I started wanting to fit in with boys but I was so far off. I’d spent all my life following the girls everywhere. It took me years before I could build healthy relationships with cis guys. Today, it's the opposite: I often joke that I can't get laid because I always hang out with cis-het guys.

**What's your relationship with your parents like today?
**Well, nonexistent. My father passed away ten years ago. My mother still lives in Amman but we’ve been low-contact since I came out. I’ve tried to talk to her but she always brings up hell or death – she's very conservative. What she has trouble accepting, really, is that people might know.

**What happened to your father?
**He died in an Israeli prison of a cancer they didn't bother to treat. I don't have all the pieces of the story. I did some research, but I'm trying to move on. I'm proud of my father – he was a good person and his story inspires me.

**Do you consider yourself a refugee?
**That's not quite the right word. Legally, I was born Jordanian, but when I was four or five-years-old, I remember realising I was Palestinian who’d come over from a country under military occupation. People will hate me for saying this, but it was an unpleasant moment. I didn’t feel like identifying with this reality I didn't choose. After all, we’re human beings – as a child, all I wanted was to eat sweets and wear nice clothes.

**How was your relationship with your family growing up?
**Not great. I found them “uncool” and conservative. I didn’t consider them on my level because they didn't speak English, for example. The truth is, I tried to lead my life in a way that nothing could bring me down.

I wanted to be smarter. Most of the movies, books, and music I immersed myself in were Western. I didn’t consume a lot of Arabic culture, even while living in Amman.

Once, when I was little, I remember I wanted to watch Lizzie McGuire, but my grandmother was against it. Sure, it's a series for stuck-up evangelical teens, but it doesn’t show anything “bad”. She took the remote and put on an Egyptian movie instead, which told the story of a charming saleswoman in the 50s who gets with a rich guy and becomes his mistress. It was a shady soap opera, but for this 80-year-old Muslim woman, that was OK, while Lizzie was haram [forbidden]. I still struggle to understand why to this day.

**What role did religion play in your upbringing?
**My parents were religious but politically secular. They didn't drink alcohol but my mother didn't wear a hijab, and gender-mixing was the norm.

**Do you consider yourself a believer?
**No. I look at religion from a sociological and anthropological perspective: How humans have shaped themselves and tried to fill the void?

**Do you feel resentment towards your family after coming out?
**Honestly, I find it hard to be angry because I believe they didn't have the space or mental health tools to understand it all. I’m lucky not to have grown up in handcuffs, and I'm grateful for that.

How did you feel when you saw Israeli soldiers waving the rainbow flag in Gaza? Horrible, obviously. But I wasn't surprised at all – the history of this flag remains Western, white, and capitalist.

**Do you know many other LGBTQ+ Palestinians?
**Not many, but some. I don’t think it’s easy to be queer in Palestine given the context and religion, but in all honesty, I've never lived in Palestine. This is just my perception as someone in exile, and I could be wrong. Truthfully, I don’t have any concrete information.

**Some say you shouldn't support the Palestinian struggle if you’re queer. Have you found your place as an activist?
**Of course, but it's by embracing who I am that I was able to do so. I had to acknowledge my privilege, my suffering, my resources, my mental health – then I could find my place.

I have to say, I’ve often felt most accepted by women who wear a hijab. Similarly, I've met many cis-het men who treated me with more respect than gay guys.

**What was their problem?
**I think there are many traumatised people in the LGBTQ+ community who reject people as a reflex, as if they have to project the hatred they experienced onto their peers. There's also a lot of racism in parts of the rich, white, gay community.

**In Europe, people think of the Middle East as very homophobic. Having lived in both regions, what do you think?
**I can only speak from my experience: In Jordan, homosexuality is not legally penalised, but socially, it's different. I was relatively accepted by my family. It comes back to this notion of privilege, since my uncles, aunts, cousins have travelled around the world and read a lot of books.

European homophobia and Arab homophobia are just different, but neither is worse than the other in my opinion.

**Do you still have hope for Palestine?
**Yes. I feel like the world is becoming more aware, but maybe I'm in my bubble. All I’m trying to do is understand what makes me happy, like an animal trying to avoid suffering. But first, you have to ask yourself, ‘What will make me feel worse: talking about Palestine, human rights, feminism, or bottling up all my feelings?’ I don't want to follow those who’ve chosen the second solution. Their way of life, their health, their relationships with money, themselves and others, depresses me.

**What’s the key to happiness in your opinion?
**Living as authentically as possible.