Pathbreakers of Arab America—Saint Levant

posted on: Sep 16, 2026

By: John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer

This is the 134th article in Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series features figures from entertainment, business, sports, science, the arts, academia, journalism, and politics. Our 134th pathbreaker is Saint Levant, a Palestinian singer-songwriter and rapper and multilingual artist who has emerged as the region’s first bona fide commercial Palestinian pop artist, and in the process has become one of the biggest stars in the Middle East. As such, he has become a flashpoint, for some inspiring a fierce loyalty to the Palestinian cause, for others, someone who uses politics to help his career.

Raised in a multi-cultural environment, Palestinian Arab Saint Levant became a trilingual singer and rapper who emerged as the region’s first bona fide commercial Palestinian pop artist

Marwan Abdelhamid was born on October 6, 2000, in Jerusalem at the start of the Second Intifada. Only much later, once he became popular as an entertainer/activist, did Abdelhamid adopt the name Saint Levant, a takeoff on the French luxury fashion brand, Yves Saint Laurent and Abdelhamid’s native Levant region, the easternmost Mediterranean region, including Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. This Pathbreaker article is the second of 134 featuring someone who is not an American citizen, but who has been a resident of the U.S., has a college degree from the University of California, is highly Americanized, is very popular in the U.S. and in the world, and who is presently being denied an entry visa. Honorific citizenship seems like it’s not too much to ask.

Abdelhamid’s mother, Maria Mohammedi, Algerian French and his father, Rashid Abdelhamid, Palestinian Serbian, were both raised in Algeria. Shortly after Abdelhamid’s birth, the family joined his paternal grandparents in the Gaza Strip, where his parents built a 22-room beachfront hotel in Rimal based on an architectural project by his father, called “Al Deira”—or loosely, ‘town center’ or ‘community.’ He spent his early childhood primarily there, attending the American International School, until the 2007 Battle of Gaza, when his family moved to Amman, Jordan.

His passion for music Abdelhamid owes to his maternal grandmother, a music teacher from whom he learned to play piano, and his father, a lover of the arts. He picked up the saxophone in middle school. Growing up, Abdelhamid communicated in French at home, English at school, and Arabic at the Palestinian refugee camp of Al-Wehdat, in Gaza, where he played football with the local team after school. In 2018, aged 17, Abdelhamid moved to the United States to pursue a bachelor’s degree in International Relations at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from which he graduated in 2022. Abdelhamid is a Muslim and until recently lived in Los Angeles, with frequent returns to his family in Amman.

As to Saint Levant’s music itself, he is described as a trilingual singer and rapper known for music that blends funk, rock, hip-hop, and rhythm and blues with traditional Palestinian and Algerian rhythms. According to a ‘Guardian’ article, “He gained a wide audience in November 2022 when his single ‘Very Few Friends’ went viral on TikTok. The song, featuring matter-of-fact, smoothly vocalized lyrics that alternate seamlessly between English, Arabic, and French against a mid-tempo beat, exemplifies his distinctive style, which fuses Western and Middle Eastern musical sensibilities.”

Based on his university training and his intellectual curiosity, in 2020 Abdelhamid created a TikTok account to discuss Palestinian history and politics. However, he quickly pivoted to making music, realizing his first two singles, ‘Jerusalem Freestyles’ and ‘Nirvana in Gaza.’ A few years later, in 2023, by then known as Saint Levant, he released his first EP (extended play), ‘From Gaza, With Love,’ 2023, a seven-track offering, which he called “an ode to the place where I spent the first seven years of my life.” In June 2024 he released his first full-length album, ‘DEIRA,’ Named after the hotel his father had built in Gaza. The hotel was later destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces at the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War. The album expresses Saint Levant’s sense of loss and longing for his homeland

Saint Levant followed up with Love Letters, an EP released on Valentine’s Day 2025 that is composed of six tracks serving as individual love letters to important people and places in his life. He separated the EP into two sides: “Side A features love letters written from a more personal perspective and incorporates traditional Arab and North African folk sounds. The love letters on side B are written from the perspective of his more public persona, Saint Levant, and feature modern pop and Arab sounds.” He has released numerous singles on a variety of streaming platforms, maintaining a steady presence on both the ‘Billboard’ Arabic Artist 100 chart and the ‘Billboard’ Arabic Hot 100 chart.

Saint Levant has been strident in his condemnation of Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza, and his insistence on Palestinian liberation

“Everything that I do is Israeli-focused and based on the Palestinian cause and struggle, doing a lot of contextualizing […] because I came to America, man, and I realized that a lot of people thought that […] it’s a conflict between these two equal [s who] just hate each other for some reason, [that] Palestinians just hate Israelis. And what people don’t understand is that it’s 80 years of occupation and oppression and displacement and ethnic cleansing, so I think it’s very important to just push that forward always and I try to do it through the music; I try to do it through my actions, and everything that I do.” This, per an interview with ‘The Guardian.’

Given his strong pro-Palestinian positions has made Saint Levant a flashpoint. Again, according to ‘The Guardian,’ “To some, he seemed to have instrumentalized politics to help his career and broken the rules of vigil by embracing revelry. To others, he was an artist who inspired fierce loyalty for plotting the right way out of grief while proudly championing the Palestinian cause. He had become a test case of something bigger. For many Arabs, this was a moment of unifying crisis, but it triggered different and contradictory impulses. Some wanted to mourn and rage against what was being destroyed, others wanted to celebrate and seek comfort in all that remained. In the middle of the two, between passionate fandom and bitter skepticism, was a young man from Gaza.”

Saint Levant’s orientation is practical, on “how we actually free Palestine. That was the question that guided my whole life trajectory.” It is also based on his ability to mix western expression and Arab politics as a member of the diaspora, according to some, making him a superpower. For a younger generation in the Arab world, this is the first time that Palestine has become “a live, painful and galvanizing issue.”

Saint Levant can channel expression about Palestine, without drawing the attention of authorities, since he is not in one Arab country and thus able to identify with the large and growing community of Palestinians who comprise the diaspora, living in exile. His songs are an homage to appeal to those in the diaspora, now using “more traditional Palestinian music and foot stomping Arab ‘dabke’ beats, unmistakably Levantine rather than western pop. In one love song, the line ‘bliruh, bildam’ – ‘with soul, with blood; – a chant of dedication of all that will be sacrificed for Palestine, rises at the end.” His concert performances are described as taking on “a wedding dancefloor sensibility…”

So, the upside of Saint Levant’s public performances is his rejection of the dehumanization of Arabs and the contempt for their culture and expression on the part of Israel and its western supporters who had privileged Israel’s narrative over that of its victims. But his critics suggest that while Palestine is central to his public image, it “often appears through polished visuals, luxury fashion, romantic music, political speeches, and carefully produced cultural symbolism.” Saint Levant’s ties in this context are with luxury fashion house Saint Laurent, through massive global exposure, brand alignment, and commercial partnerships.

In addition to such conceptual issues involved in perceptions of Saint Levant’s rubbing up against monied, commercial interests are the more imminent, material problem of his chances of returning to his home Los Angeles. This is a direct result of delays in his U.S. tour over visa restrictions, delaying his North American tour dates until spring 2027. Such a delay is due to new U.S. immigration requirements involving international artists’ tours. These have affected multiple foreign acts having to cancel or alter U.S. plans and are attributable to sweeping immigration changes under President Donald Trump’s second administration.

In conclusion, Saint Levant’s influence is due in part to the international music and fashion industries, which have found his version of Palestine highly marketable. He moves fluidly between Arab and Western spaces. He packages his Palestinian identity in part through “designer clothing, polished visuals, global festivals, romantic songs, and commercial collaborations.” But this assumption is part of the problem, since “Palestinians do not come in one shape, live one life, or carry one kind of struggle.”

Saint Levant may not have suffered personally as much as some Palestinians have. In the case of his artistry, however, it is a question of whether his audience believe he is honest and credible. In our view, he has clearly passed that test.

Listen to a portion of his ‘Love Letters’ EP, a little bit of side A and the same for side B. That way, you’ll get a sense of the more traditional Arab rhythms on side A and a fusion of Arab and western styles on side B. See how you like it.

Sources:
“Saint Levant,” Wikipedia, 2026
“Saint Levant Website,” 2026
“Saint Levant: the pop star from Gaza caught between passionate fandom and bitter disapproval,” Nesrine Malik, The Guardian, 5/26/2026
“Saint Levant delays US tour over visa restrictions was used to generate this article’s audio,” Roya News, 2/9/2026
“The Debate Behind Shabjdeed’s Saint Levant Diss: Is Palestinian Identity About Heritage or the Struggle?” The Tea, 8/2/2026

John Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017 and of his new novel, WHISPERS FROM THE DESERT: Zaki, a Little Genie’s Tales of Good and Evil (2025), under his pen name, Yahia Al-Banna. He has taught at the University of Libya in Benghazi, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo. John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.

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