Clare Malone: This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Clare Malone. You might remember a story from a little more than a year ago when three college students were shot while walking down the street in Burlington, Vermont. Burlington is generally known as a safe, very liberal college town. The young men were Palestinians from the West Bank attending schools in the Northeast. Two of them were wearing keffiyehs, THE Palestinian headscarf. The shooting was assumed by many people to be a hate crime. Though the suspect hasn't been charged with that by prosecutors.

The victims all survived. A reporter named Suzanne Gaber has been talking with one of them since shortly after the attack. His name is Hisham Awartani. Suzanne went to the West Bank recently to visit the Awartani family and talk about what's on everyone's minds there, the possibility that Israel will annex their home and the entire West Bank. Here's Suzanne Gaber.

Suzanne Gaber: How often do you go back to the school since you graduated?

Hisham Awartani: A few times. Every time I'm back, I come once.

Suzanne Gaber: It seems like you're very close with the teachers.

Hisham Awartani: Yes, it's a small school.

Suzanne Gaber: In January, I went to visit Hisham Awartani. He's a senior in college, and when he was home on break, he went to visit his high school.

Hisham Awartani: Some of them have been teaching for, like, 20, 30 years. Some of them have taught my cousins who are now married and have PhDs and getting divorced.

Suzanne Gaber: Hisham's mother, Elizabeth, drove him.

Elizabeth: Wait, can you, like, wait until I park?

Hisham Awartani: You don't open the door until the car is open.

Elizabeth: [laughs]

Suzanne Gaber: The school is Ramallah Friends School. It's at the top of a steep overlooking the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. It's a cluster of beautiful old stone buildings. Two of Hisham's best friends from school met him there. Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad. The three of them were almost giddy.

You're going to see another friend?

Hisham Awartani: No, we're going to go see the teacher.

Suzanne Gaber: The boys go to college in the US and so people are excited to see them. Five different teachers are gathered around, fawning over them and saying embarrassing things. "We really missed you. You guys were the best class. No, really, you were older than your years. You understood things way above your age," that kind of thing.

The head of the school walks up and she wants to greet them, too.

Head Teacher: I was just on the phone with Se'ed.

Hisham Awartani: Oh, yes, of course.

Head Teacher: He says, hello. I want to say hello to Hisham.

Hisham Awartani: Thank you.

Suzanne Gaber: Holding court?

Hisham Awartani: Yes.

Suzanne Gaber: While we were there, one of the boys, Tahseen, got a job offer, but I can't really tell if it's serious or not.

Tahseen Ali Ahmad: I told him I was doing math. He's like, okay, by the time you graduate, I'll be retired and you'll come replace me.

Suzanne Gaber: Do you want to do that?

Tahseen Ali Ahmad: That sounds fun. I don't know how well he gets paid [laughs], but it'd be nice to be here.

Suzanne Gaber: Of course, they got to reminiscing about the times they got in trouble messing around in chem lab.

Tahseen Ali Ahmad: Oh my God. We were doing experiment putting water on the salt and watching it sizzle. I was like, "Hey, what would happen if I spit in this?"

[laughter]

Hisham Awartani: Only time I ever got in trouble for something in school was I installed Counter-Strike on the PCs here. It's not that hard to install. You type in like install Counter-Strike 1.6. We used to hang out with the library too, with the librarian.

Suzanne Gaber: You would hang out with the librarian?

Hisham Awartani: Yes, that's the guy we saw. We talked politics.

Tahseen Ali Ahmad: Here you have to be political. You see what's happening around and then you're like, oh, why is this happening? Then you get into politics.

Suzanne Gaber: That, for you, was high school?

Tahseen Ali Ahmad: It's everyone. Yes, that's what I think.

Suzanne Gaber: Even from the grounds of the school, you can see directly across the valley to the Israeli settlement town of Sigot, but the West Bank has changed since Hisham left for college. It's grown far more dangerous for Palestinians. Nostalgia is especially complicated.

Hisham Awartani: I guess reconnecting with my childhood, seeing the things that are more familiar, it's like, wow, a lot has changed. I can't drill at home. There are lots of things that are different in my life now permanently, but what's the use in kicking yourself over things that have been lost?

Suzanne Gaber: Hisham has lost a lot. Part of the reason the teachers were so emotional about greeting the three boys was what happened while they were away at college a little over a year ago.

Reporter: Tonight, police on the hunt for the gunman who they say shot three Palestinian college students in Burlington, Vermont.

Suzanne Gaber: Hisham's grandmother lives in Burlington, so he, Tahseen, and Kinnan had all gone there from their respective colleges to spend Thanksgiving.

Reporter: President Biden has been briefed on the suspected hate-motivated shooting. The 20-year-old students are all graduates of a West Bank--

Suzanne Gaber: Kinnan, Tahseen, and Hisham were shot on the street. The man accused of the shooting is named Jason Eaton. He's awaiting trial. It seems he didn't speak to them or start a fight, just shot them as they walked by.

Hisham Awartani: My main priority at that point was just to call 911. I tried to open my phone and then when there's liquid on your phone, it messes up. I got actually locked out of my phone because I couldn't put in the password right, but then I went to the emergency thing. I ended up calling 911. Didn't know if I was going to survive. Didn't know if my friends were alive. I was like, "Oh, this is how it ends." I was like it was never outside of the realm of possibility for that to happen to me, but I always expected to be in the West Bank and never in Burlington.

Suzanne Gaber: The shooting in Vermont was big news. It was seven weeks after Hamas's October 7th attack in Israel shook the world. Kinnan and Tahseen made full physical recoveries, but Hisham--

Reporter: Hisham Awartani's mother, tells WBZ in Boston her son is now paralyzed and may not be able to move his legs for the rest of his life after the shooting left him with a bullet in his spine.

Suzanne Gaber: Hey.

Speaker 6: Hello.

Suzanne Gaber: I was just checking in to see Hisham Awartani.

Automated Voice: Sixth floor.

Speaker 7: Suzanne?

Suzanne Gaber: Hi. Yes, nice to see you. I first met Hisham in January of last year in a physical rehab facility in Boston. He spent two months there recovering from surgery and adjusting his body to using a wheelchair. His legs remain paralyzed. I spent the year getting to know him. Hisham is a shy, academic kind of guy. He's double majoring at Brown University in math and archaeology.

Hisham Awartani: I've always loved history. Archaeology, I feel like, is not a more objective take on history, but it's just another way of looking at things. In history, you often get lost in the big picture of like King X declares war and whatever, like larger political systems. Whereas in archaeology, it's just- it's more personal. It gives you a better idea of how people live their lives.

Suzanne Gaber: When Hisham went back to Brown in a wheelchair, he got involved in the movement for Brown to divest from companies that students said facilitated the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. He became a symbol of anti-Palestinian violence.

Student: Brown Corporation is a scam no others like Hisham.

Students: Brown Corporation is a scam no others like Hisham. Go Hisham. Go Hisham.

Suzanne Gaber: The spotlight was hard on Hisham. It's something that came up a lot in our conversations. Is it weird that people are invested in you?

Hisham Awartani: Yes. Even beforehand, I was quite a private person.

Suzanne Gaber: What did this do to that, I guess? Do you feel like you can have any privacy at this point?

Hisham Awartani: I don't know. I hope that just in the future, not that people will forget, but that- I don't know, I'll be able to grow out of it and do things on my own and be known by those things. I'll try to keep low profile, but it's not that easy in a wheelchair.

Suzanne Gaber: It's also not that easy when you're now a national news story.

Hisham Awartani: Yes.

Suzanne Gaber: I feel like even on Brown campus have become quite a point of topic.

Hisham Awartani: Yes, especially on the Brown campus.

Suzanne Gaber: The divestment movement was a big part of his life. If after all that work, the school didn't divest?

Hisham Awartani: It would be very infuriating. It would mean this institution that I'm a part of is- not only is it implicit in, like, refusing to condemn what's happening to, like, Palestinian people, but it's also like saying it will never condemn. It's basically just like throwing the whole nation under the bus.

Suzanne Gaber: Eventually, in October of last year, the university board voted against divestment. It was pretty demoralizing for Hisham. He was done. By that point, he was watching from afar as violence surged in the West Bank.

Reporter: A terrifying wave of Israeli settler violence has engulfed the West Bank.

Reporter: Israeli forces have killed at least seven Palestinians during a military raid in the city of Jenin. At least nine Palestinians have also been injured, two of whom are in serious condition.

Hisham Awartani: I don't know. I wish I could be there, just to experience it with my family. I don't want to feel like I'm abandoning my family. Maybe it's a bit of survivor's guilt.

Suzanne Gaber: The survivor's guilt was eating at him. He was attending classes, going to physical therapy, but in every lecture, every new workout, the desire to return to the West Bank and be with his family hung over him.

Hisham Awartani: I felt like the time is ticking and that there could be a possibility that some form of annexation happens while I'm outside. Then because I'm outside, I lose my legal status to live in Palestine.

Suzanne Gaber: Since Donald Trump was elected in November, the possibility of annexation has felt even more imminent.

Reporter: A high-profile Israeli lawmaker said yesterday Israel is a "step away from annexing the occupied West Bank following Trump's election."

Reporter: Smotrich suggested planning for this is already in motion.

Reporter: He's ordered his officials to draw plans for Israel to annex some 150 settlements in the West Bank. Now, Smotridge is a settler himself. He's also a key minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition.

Suzanne Gaber: When the fall semester ended in December, Hisham returned to Ramallah for the first time since the shooting. At that point, he told me he might not return to college. He was too worried about what might happen in the West Bank.

Getting to the West Bank is even harder in a wheelchair. His grandmother from Vermont went with him. It takes three flights, multiple border crossings, and hours of waiting to go through Israeli immigration with no guarantee of being let in.

Hisham Awartani: Then I got home, and I collapsed. Literally, the second day is probably 36 hours just in bed, sleeping in.

Suzanne Gaber: The West Bank,too, the shooting in Vermont had made big news. Hisham had a steady stream of visitors.

Hisham Awartani: I'm not exaggerating. I think the past week, there have been guests over every single day, and I've had to greet them every single day. I've had a whole week of not lounging in bed.

Suzanne Gaber: By the time I made it to Ramallah, he'd been home for a few weeks. One night, I went over for dinner. Hisham's younger brother and sister were there, and I wanted to talk about what was on everybody's mind. The prospect of annexation. On the news in the US, annexation is a hypothetical, a major world event that might happen, but sitting in Ramallah, the Awartani family talked about annexation as a fact of life.

Elizabeth: Yes. I think annexation's definitely happening.

Hisham Awartani: Yes. Annexation, I feel like it's getting worse, but it's not something that's so jarring.

Suzanne Gaber: What would be so jarring?

Hisham Awartani: Killing everyone here. I don't know.

Suzanne Gaber: In case you didn't catch that, he's making a joke about the Israelis killing everyone in the West Bank. It was surprising to me to hear him talk like that. Somehow he seemed more carefree than when we talked about this before. You'd think it would be scarier to contemplate from within the West Bank.

When we were sitting in Providence, there was such a present fear of losing your connection to home and the escalation of the war and what that would mean to your connection to home. It feels almost like that's evaporated.

Hisham Awartani: Well, no. Yes, because I'm here. The connection is, like, not that home, per se, will cease to exist. as I'll just lose the right to be here. I don't know. It's uncertainty. Would you say so?

Elizabeth: Yes, yes. We live with the knowledge that we could be killed at any moment.

Suzanne Gaber: I also think that when you're in the US, you have anxiety because you expect you can control more. Do you think so, Hicham? Like when you're here you're like eh, whatever happens happens. When you're in the U.S. There's a greater anxiety because you feel like you.

Have to take action.

Elizabeth: I think what they're going to do, if they were to annex, it would be a slow suffocation to encourage people to leave. Then potentially yes, I think that's what they would do.

Hisham Awartani: Sure. If they're encouraging people to leave, then they would stop people from coming back at some point. Again, because Ramallah is such a bubble, you're sheltered from everything because life goes on pretty normally in Ramallah. Definitely, from last time, people are more depressed and hopeless and whatever, but in terms of day-to-day livelihood, you feel more unaffected.

Suzanne Gaber: Hisham broached the idea of graduating school early. He didn't want to risk returning to the States for too long in case Israel made a sudden move that cut him off from his home in the West Bank, but his folks weren't buying it.

Elizabeth: He started talking about graduating early. I said, you have to get two degrees. I think he was going to sacrifice his math degree in order to get his archaeology degree. I'm like, you have one class left in math.

As long as he gets a degree, that's not my life to live. He gets those two degrees and he's out of there and he can do what he wants.

Suzanne Gaber: That is a very mom answer.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Suzanne Gaber: They also didn't want him to stop physical therapy in the US. That was a non-negotiable.

Hisham Awartani: I think actually, her bigger concern was I think she just wanted me to do physical therapy for as long as I could. It's not that I didn't care about it, but it's something that I felt like how much is physical therapy going to help if I'm miserable?

Suzanne Gaber: Hisham and I were talking in Ramallah just before President Trump's inauguration. The Awartanis could see what was coming.

Hisham Awartani: I think it's like actual policy aside, the feeling that the Israeli government will get- they feel like they've been written more of a blank check than they've already being written because policy-wise, if you look at like on the ground, what will change in terms of material support, it's not like the previous administration was putting any checks. I think Israel is just more emboldened with Trump in office.

Suzanne Gaber: Since January, a series of Israeli attacks on the northern West Bank has led to the largest displacement in the territory since 1967. Around 40,000 Palestinians have fled their homes. The idea of a political solution that would include a Palestinian state seems farther away than ever. After the long discussions with his parents, Hisham went back to Brown for the spring semester. Once he recovered from the trip, he settled back into college life.

Hisham Awartani: It's been good. I have my routine and the routine is nice. It's okay. I think I have things figured out and, like just go to class, go back to class.

Suzanne Gaber: How is it seeing your cats?

Hisham Awartani: It was really good. I was afraid that they would have forgotten me, but they didn't. One of them was, like, actually even more affectionate because I think she missed me. That's a hope.

Suzanne Gaber: Sitting back in his dorm at school, it's been more than a year since Hisham and I first started talking. When this semester started, I saw a lightness in him that felt new. Being home changed him in some ways. After a year of watching violence in the West Bank on the news, seeing life go on, at least in what he calls the bubble of Ramallah, was comforting.

His friends are helping him put his situation in perspective. One of Hisham's suitemates at Brown is from Ukraine. Another is from Syria. They've all lived through horrific disruptions in their countries.

Hisham Awartani: I don't know, maybe it's naive, but it's like just going back there and seeing life there being lived as it is is something that's mixed annexation and like expulsion. more concrete idea. If you're thinking about in the abstract, it's like you worry about it more versus, like, okay, it's going to be a big logistical issue.

I guess, what calmed me down is like, well, whatever happens, it's going to be really logistically complicated. I feel like hopefully, I'll be able to slip through the cracks. If annexation happens, I can just take academic leave and then go back home real quick and then somehow figure my situation out.

Suzanne Gaber: He's focusing on the practical.

Hisham Awartani: I have a good idea. It's like, okay, I take these clothes. I have some medical supplies that I need to always take with me. Books-wise, yes, maybe I take one or two books for the journey, but, I have so many books back home, it's superfluous. It's like bringing coal to Newcastle.

Suzanne Gaber: Do your parents know that this is the plan if that were to happen?

Hisham Awartani: I think I told them. I don't know if they thought I was joking or something.

Suzanne Gaber: I keep returning to something Hisham told me early on about majoring in archaeology. He likes the field because it isn't about the big headlines of history, kings declaring war and so on. He likes the more intimate view of how people lived normal lives. Annexation of the West Bank would have huge consequences, not just for Palestinians, but for the entire Middle East, but Hisham is also seeing it as a fight to keep living a normal life during one of the most unsettled and deadly historical moments in this long conflict.

Hisham Awartani: I think for better or for worse, I'm trying to think too much about things too far ahead. Annexation, is something that now feels more pressing and salient, but, I'm not going to think about what's going to happen 20 years in the future which I think, in the large part is the timeframe that lots of these things are working on. Who knows? I'm 21 years old. In the period of time that I've been alive, it's been a slow push. It's like I'm the frog in the boiling pot.

Clare Malone: Hisham Awartani is a senior at Brown University. Suzanne Gaber is a freelance reporter. Some of her reporting about Hashem and the shooting in Vermont has appeared on WNYC's Notes from America. I'm Clare Malone. You can find my reporting and all my colleagues work@newyorker.com. You can subscribe to the magazine there as well.

 

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