Parallel Lives: How It Feels to Be Palestinian in Berlin

When the bombings began, Abed Hassan was in Gaza visiting family – and he felt this time, things might be different. “I weirdly did not feel anger or hopelessness. I felt that maybe, this time, with such intensity, our situation as Palestinians will change,” he said. 

Since returning home to Berlin, Hassan and his fellow Palestinians in the German capital – home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in all of Europe – have lost any sense of promise. 

“It feels absurd to live here as a Palestinian,” says 31-year-old Neukölln resident Zaid Abdulnasser. “We are watching atrocities being committed against our people in real time, struggling to process them, while the state around us actively works to deny, distort, and gaslight us in profoundly dehumanising ways.

“We watch tents being burned, the relentless bombardment without end,” he told HEIST. “And then you step outside and are told, explicitly or implicitly, that none of this is real, that none of it matters, even as it happens with German support.”

Ryad Aref, a Gazan Berliner who works as an independent journalist, also feels this sense of unreality. “I felt that there were things happening in front of our eyes that weren’t being told as they are,” he says. 

With all of his family in Gaza, Aref says that the last two years have affected him deeply – specifically, losing his brother during the genocide.  “As a Palestinian, every piece of news is personal pain, not distant politics. Living in Berlin during this time was difficult, as I am far away from family and my people, while at the same time experiencing the helplessness of the community here.” 

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Since 2023, Palestinians in Berlin have faced a range of repressive measures: aggressive policing, deportation orders, thousands of fines and summonses, and a political establishment intent on criminalising, isolating and silencing an already marginalised population. Civil society organizations estimate that the death toll in Gaza exceeds 100,000; Germany, meanwhile, is Israel’s second-largest weapons supplier. Demonstrations on Berlin’s streets are met with violence, mass detentions and kettling, and sweeping restrictions on speech and assembly. At least 766 incidents of repression against Palestine solidarity have been documented in Germany since 2019, the majority taking place since the war began. Many activists are engaged in ongoing court appeals, face diminished employment prospects, and endure media smears and doxxing for speaking out. Several Palestinians who spoke to HEIST requested anonymity or were hesitant to speak altogether, citing fear of retaliation. 

Berlin judiciary is not an independent arbiter of justice, but an active participant in the German state’s systematic repression of Palestine solidarity.

To make matters worse, Palestinians are trapped in bureaucratic limbo. Germany has an estimated 200,000 Palestinians living in the country, with the largest concentration in Berlin. But the government doesn’t recognise Palestine as a nationality in recorded demographic data, instead categorising people as “stateless” or “undetermined” – ungeklärt, in German. Many of Berlin’s Palestinians are refugees twice over, coming to Germany from war-torn Lebanon in the late 1970s. Germany gave them Duldung status: a temporary – but indefinite – postponement of deportation. 

The Duldung robs people of a normal life, making it difficult to obtain the documentation needed to get a job or apply to university. The often-chaotic ‘Arab streets’ of Neukölln, where much of the community has taken root, are weaponised as proof to Germans that Arabs and Palestinians have failed to integrate into society, and seldom as a failure of the German state to properly recognise a people. 

Marwa* is a Palestinian activist whose family was given Duldung upon their arrival to Berlin after escaping war in Lebanon. Her parents won the right of citizenship after years of legal battles. But Marwa’s legal status brings her little comfort, as she feels her constitutional rights are treated as secondary. Last year, as she was participating in a protest, a man did the Nazi salute at her. She reported the incident to the police. Later, cops showed up at her door while she was getting her children ready for school (Marwa had already received a summons to give a witness statement, and intended on going.) “I was trying to do my due diligence as someone who was wronged while peacefully protesting,” she says. The court ultimately did not find the man guilty, even with video evidence and multiple witnesses present at his hearing. 

This wasn’t the first time Marwa had a bad experience with the police. “I was a witness in another case, and again, German police came to my door, terrorised my children, and even came to my work to forcefully take my phone and electronics.

“There is no law or order or rights for us Palestinians,” she said. “[The] only relief I have after two years of bloodshed and the state terrorising us is my family and my siblings. They are the only things that help me continue the fight.”

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The past years have felt particularly difficult to be a Palestinian in Berlin. Some of those who spoke to HEIST lamented a double standard in how the police treat religious institutions, with mosques and Muslim centres held to far stricter standards than churches or synagogues. Monitored by the Verfassungsschutz, these institutions are vulnerable to closures and police investigations under the pretext of “threatening the constitutional order” or fears of spreading political Islam. In July 2024, police raided the oldest Shia Mosque, Imam Ali Mosque (Blue Mosque) in Hamburg. Fifty-two mosques and Islamic centres across Germany were also raided, citing supposed support of terror and “rampant antisemitism”. 

Meanwhile, these religious centres have become important places of mourning for a community that has few places to turn. Many Palestinians in Berlin are grieving loved ones killed in Gaza, with some losing dozens of family members in a single airstrike. Mosques offer a mourning house, or bayt azza – a place where people gather to offer condolences after a death, even with no funeral procession. 

Abed Hassan says that this doesn’t make a dent in the kind of support Palestinians Muslims need. He feels strongly how Palestinians in Berlin have lacked the infrastructure needed to help with the psychological toll of losing friends and family. Mosques and Muslim organisations have faced direct pressure from the state to condemn Hamas and express solidarity with Israel. As a result, Muslim Palestinians often cannot find solace in their places of worship, which are heavily monitored and pressured – effectively isolating them.

“When I was able to return to Germany, I was first met with wide support and solidarity especially because of how I documented the atrocities, and then I realized that even Palestinians cannot even expect the smallest amounts of political initiative from Muslim organisations.” 

He recalled one incident involving a dispute with members of his mosque over serving Israeli and Emirati dates, which he had hoped they would boycott. “It’s the smallest gesture, a boycott, and even [for] that our community members are unwilling to sacrifice. I do believe that ultimately, state pressure is to blame. However, we need to do more,” he said. “The systematic oppression that Palestinians experience, whether here or in Gaza, does not mean we should not try more.” 

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The absence of institutional support has led Palestinians and those in solidarity with them to create parallel infrastructures. Founded in 2024, Berlin-based organisation 3ezwa provides financial and legal support to those facing repression for activism. Their team has since supported over 350 criminal and migration cases.

“3ezwa is designed to address gaps in existing legal support structures,” founder Nomi told Refuge Worldwide. “It was a conscious decision to start this Verein in Germany rather than from elsewhere. We stand with the Palestinian cause, in Germany. If they like it or not.” 

Tobias den Haan, a 3ezwa board member, told HEIST that the organisation initially raised funds through a GoFundMe called the ‘Berlin Legal Fund’. “Lots of people donated, but considering the sheer amount of cases and the necessity to have a pro-Palestinian support structure due to the relative lack of support from existing German structures, we thought about how to make it sustainable and eventually created an association with people who pay into it in a membership model.”

The organisation seldom rejects a case, and also hosts weekly, appointment-free counselling sessions that anyone can walk into. Minimal data is kept on those who access their help. “Our work is going well, but we also face the collective challenge in the solidarity movement of potentially having to raise millions of euros to actually help all the people – over 12,000 cases in all of Germany – that are being slapped with criminal charges over pro-Palestinian solidarity,” de Haan told HEIST. “In a lot of this process, the repression is not visible. Besides the visible and often brutal police violence, repression can create a lot of financial, professional and residency-related uncertainty that can carry on for years. This is why we need to support each other collectively and organise.”

There has also been a sustained effort to help Palestinians with physical legal support inside the courtroom. Roser Gari Perez is a member of CourtWatch, a group that spends nearly every day attending hearings for affected members of the community. 

We are watching atrocities being committed against our people in real time, struggling to process them, while the state around us actively works to deny, distort, and gaslight us in profoundly dehumanising ways

“What we do first of all is to be with the people, since they are in a very stressful situation. So that these people are not alone, we are trained to keep conversations on the day of court light hearted,” Roser said. “During the court, however, we are meticulous in our recording. We write as much as we can of what is happening, because there is no public record in the German courts. If we see incidents that are problematic, or events that are intentionally distorted, we try to provide and analyse everything for the accused.” 

CourtWatch observed 200 cases between April 2024 to August 2025. They found that  judges and prosecutors made overtly political statements supporting Israel’s right to self-defense while dismissing Germany’s complicity in grave violations of international law. References to Palestinian’s right to resist were frequently equated with terrorism. In their report, representatives of CourtWatch claim that “Berlin judiciary is not an independent arbiter of justice, but an active participant in the German state’s systematic repression of Palestine solidarity.”  

Documentation as a method of resistance takes many forms in Berlin – and there’s plenty to document when it comes to what’s happening on the streets. Palestine and Allies (PAllies), a Palestinian activist group in Berlin, has an Arrest Press Unit, which records all of the repression cases that took place across Berlin. Through this work, activist groups are able to document police violence and the injuries of the arrested during demonstrations. 

“Protests can be violent and heartbreaking when police do not respect our humanity,” a spokesperson for the group told HEIST.  “However, in these moments we are still showing the Berlin community we will not be erased.”

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Germany’s cultural and institutional landscape is overwhelmingly shaped by public funding — something that’s been weaponised to isolate some and highlight others. Oyoun, a Neukölln cultural centre, was defunded in December 2023 and evicted a year later after refusing to cancel an event on Jewish-Palestinian solidarity — despite the city finding no evidence of the antisemitism it had alleged. Two FLINTA* welfare centres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg had their contracts terminated with immediate effect in 2024 over workers' pro-Palestinian views. At the last two Berlinale festivals, filmmakers were publicly condemned by German politicians for their views on Palestine. And yet, such exclusion has led some to create cultural spaces that attempt to redress the balance. For the last two years, filmmakers and creatives have hosted the Palinale, a free film festival on the same dates as the Berlinale. Their goal is to centre Palestinian voices through film, panels, exhibitions and performances, which serve as an alternative and protest to the anti-Palestinian sentiment from the state-funded Berlinale. 

We have the right to confront our history. We have the right to mourn our dead

“A group of filmmakers and professionals came together as a response to the repression that Palestinians are facing in Germany,” a spokesperson from Palinale told HEIST. “[Everyone in the collective] would normally attend the Berlinale, and instead they are a part of a project that understands how those who wanted to highlight Palestine, the genocide.” 

Palinale representatives told HEIST that in 2025 the festival had more than 1,800 attendees across 55 events, and screened 61 films from 23 countries, including 26 Palestinian film productions. They also raised €7,000 in donations, which was donated to Gaza relief efforts. 

“Everything is donation-based, in order for us to stay away from any funding from the state that could impose a political perspective or subject the organisers to unfair critiques because of our political stance,” the spokesperson said. 

In the absence of institutional support, art has been a vital practice in the acknowledgement of suffering. In November, Palestinian-German artist and filmmaker Pary El-Qalqili staged a performance at Sophiensaele that offered Berlin’s Palestinian youth a chance to exorcise their grief. In ‘Burning Earth’, the audience was invited to look at themselves as they witnessed genocide and grief unfold before them. “From a distance, we watch as our dead are buried. In our dreams, the dead speak to us: Look at us, look at the burning earth, look into our eyes,” the programme text read. 

The show, which combined boxing, martial arts, and acting exercises, was performed by teenage Palestinians. “Despite being here in such a precarious situation, these youth with no experience in theater experienced and politically articulated their grief and transformed it as a way to resist erasure. My goal was to carry out their grief in a dignified way,” El-Qalqili told HEIST. 

Later, op-ed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, attempted to use the fact of this single pay to contend that art in solidarity with Palestine is actually well-funded in Germany - throwing in the accusation that Burning Earth’ showed “the glorification of antisemitic terror”. 

El-Qalqili responded in a statement: “Structural intimidation is not binary – it is not about whether every critical voice is completely silenced, but about the deterrent effect on public discourse. Palestinians in Germany are entitled to the same fundamental and human rights as everyone else: freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and artistic freedom. We have the right to confront our history. We have the right to mourn our dead.”

*Names changed or shortened for privacy