Disabled from a young age, Bara Abudheir was finally on his way to pursue his dream in computer animation in a master’s program in the United Kingdom. However, his parents were shocked to learn he was arrested as he crossed the Allenby Bridge into Jordan and charged with being a member of Hamas. Steven Davidson talks with Bara’s father, Farid Abudheir, who is doing everything he can to save his son’s future, “I have for a long time believed that Bara will achieve his goals and make his dreams real. I have not lost that hope.”

Growing up in the US, the Israeli national anthem held special meaning for Steven Davidson. But after living with a Palestinian family in Hebron, the song gained a different meaning: “Hatikvah didn’t feel so close to my heart any more. Its solemn melody still aroused that sense of belonging through wandering, only now, this sense felt betrayed by the song’s words. Everyone singing Hatikvah in this room felt like they belonged in a state they barely knew of— to the exclusion of so many whose home this had once been.”

Welcome to Khadoori Institute. Located on the pre-1967 border with Israel in the city of Tulkarem, this Palestinian agricultural and technical college has lost 200 dunams of land to Israel’s separation wall and neighbors an Israeli chemical factory that was built in the occupied territories to circumvent environmental laws. In the 1990s the IDF took 23 dunums of school property to place a military training field on Khadoori’s campus and since tensions rekindled in October 2015, soldiers have shot at protesting students on campus with live bullets, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray gas, and also sprayed skunk liquid over university buildings.