(CNN) -- I am an American, and I love my country, but I also love my heritage. I was born in Tampa, Florida, to Palestinian-American parents, but 70% of my family still lives in the West Bank, including my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. When I was 3, my parents decided to move back to Palestine -- a choice that changed the course of my life. The purpose of the move was for me and my siblings to learn Arabic and our family's culture. Yet, the four-year experience offered much more than that. We lived peacefully in Ramallah, a West Bank city just north of Jerusalem, when we moved there in 1997. My father built a home in Area C, an Israeli-controlled region of the West Bank. During the first two years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at a quiet period. Our lives were pretty normal. My older brother and I attended a private school operated by the American education system, and my two older sisters went to a French all-girls Catholic school. In our free time, our days consisted of shopping in Ramallah, taking cabs to Jerusalem and hiking mountains.
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Naim Naif spent part of his childhood in Ramallah, West Bank
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Naif, 20, says that living under occupation "felt normal"
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70% of his family still lives in the West Bank
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