Writing stories about Gaza does not come only from interviewing and observing but most importantly they come from being a central part of it, as I experience them as any local living here.
No matter how often the same thing happens to different people across Palestine, it’s brushed off as an exception or a lie rather than acknowledged as Palestinians’ lived reality.
The name Manhattan was taken from indigenous Native Americans, similar to how Atarot, the name of an Israeli settlement, took its name from the Palestinian village, Attara. The settlement stole the name from the village upon which it was built.
Palestinian resistance is spreading. The example of Gaza is now being seen in the West Bank. For most Palestinians, their existence is how they stand up and resist.
For Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and apartheid, driving comes with more dangers than you can imagine.
If two-year-old Mohammad al-Tamimi was named Eric instead, would his killing by Israeli soldiers have been treated differently in the international media?
Here in Gaza, the people who are not killed when their homes are turned into rubble by Israeli bombs are called ‘survivors’. But in reality, they cannot really be called such. How can you be a survivor if you have lost everything?
Next week will mark 75 years since the Nakba, the “catastrophe”, that expelled 750,000 Palestinian and launched the Israeli occupation of Palestine. But the Nakba is not simply an historical event. It continues to unfold today.
At 18, the struggle in Nabi Saleh was my initiation to Palestinian confrontation, and to hope. Now, twelve years later, I am covering a new generation of Palestinians fighting to survive the slaughterhouse.