Located in the Neukoelln neighbourhood of Berlin, Al-Huleh was set up in 1995 as the city’s first Palestinian society and since then it’s been the first point of call for thousands of Palestinians and other Arab migrants new to Berlin.
‘In Germany, Palestinians are completely marginalised from cultural life, politics and public spaces’
– Nour Safadi, event organiser
Al-Huleh’s founders, some of whom are now dead, included Germany’s earliest Palestinian migrants, who first arrived as students and medical trainees in the early 1960s. It wasn’t until the 1975 outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War that Palestinians began arriving in large numbers. Until then, the Palestinian population was a few thousand.
Most Palestinians in Germany trace their arrival to the 1970s, when Germany was split into the capitalist west and communist east, and most are now in areas located in the former West Germany.
While Berlin has the largest Palestinian population by some margin, other centres include Munich, Hamburg and Frankfurt, all city’s in Germany’s west.
In a similar pattern, almost all other migrants from Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East resettled and remained in the west of Germany. Migrants to the one-time East Germany were typically from fellow socialist states like Vietnam, Angola and Mozambique.
Today, although the community centre’s roots are in Palestine, it has opened its doors to all, and sees Arabs from all over the region gather there.
Origins of the community
“This organisation was established to help with the first steps in Germany, to meet people and show them how things work here,” Abu Nader, one of Al-Huleh’s founders, tells Middle East Eye.
“Earlier, we had a lot of events, with dabke, food and dancing. Now we mostly help members navigate German bureaucracy or with legal issues. Sometimes we give relationship counselling, too.”
These days, the Palestinian Diplomatic Mission in Berlin estimates that there are over 100,000 people of Palestinian descent residing in Germany, including over 25,000 in Berlin alone. But because Germany does not recognise Palestinian as an official nationality, most remain unrepresented in government statistics.
Of the roughly one million migrants from countries like Syria and Iraq who resettled in Germany between 2015 and 2017, thousands were stateless Palestinians. They, too, remain uncounted.
Today, it’s not uncommon to hear people say, “I’m from Iraq, but I’m actually Palestinian” during introductions on the first day of German class in one of Berlin’s language schools.