Are Palestinians Really Racist?

At least 350 Afro-Palestinians from Nigeria, Chad, Senegal, and Sudan reside in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. The Afro-Palestinian neighborhood is only accessible through an Israeli police checkpoint where officers interrogate anyone who is not from the local community.

Most Afro-Palestinians in this tight-knit community came to the region as religious pilgrims during the British Mandate for Palestine. Others arrived as volunteers with the Egyptian army to fight against Zionist militias taking control of historic Palestine during the Arab-Israeli war.

Many of them have been part of the Palestinian resistance movement since Israel’s establishment in 1948. Locals say that the first Palestinian woman to be imprisoned for a paramilitary operation against Israel was Fatima Barnawi, a Nigerian-Palestinian detained in 1967 for the attempted bombing of an Israeli cinema in West Jerusalem.

Still, decades later, Afro-Palestinian youth continue to live their daily lives under Israeli control.