Ghada Issa Ghabboun
Co-Director of Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem
My father worked ten years before he managed a room for us outside the refugee camp. Even the walls and windows weren’t complete, but it was a palace because it was outside the camp. Father used to say, “We are the victims of the victims.” He meant the Holocaust victims, but my Israeli friends try to build bridges. We have a painful history, and it has to stop. We can’t keep killing each other. [..]
Ihsan Mohammed Turkieh
Comedy writer and actress
A checkpoint is a horrible scene, but as a comedian, I like to play the simple Palestinian lady. She says to the soldier, “Please, my daughter, she is in the hospital, let me go to see my daughter.” He barks, “Do you have a permit? If you don’t have a permit, you will not pass.” She pleads, “Let me go, let me go.” He yells, “Yallah, get away from here!” She curses the Wall and yells back, “I wish a tsunami takes the Wall, takes you. Then both of us will be at rest at the end!” The Israelis laugh, but it is very black comedy. [..]
Gita Hazani
Director General of Mosaica Center for Inter-Religious Cooperation
When the fears are gone and both sides say what they really feel, they open their hearts and say very difficult things. Someone says, “When you talk about your ownership of the holy temple, I feel someone put a knife in my heart and turned it. It’s so difficult to hear you talking this way about my holy place.” [..]
Hadeel Rizq-Qazzaz
Program Coordinator for Heinrich Böll Foundation
The people in Gaza are human beings with families. They love, they hate, they want to get married, they want to go to hospitals, and they want food. You can’t ignore them, they are humans.
The international community thinks it’s boycotting Hamas—they’re boycotting 1.5 million human beings, more than 60 percent of them children below 18 years of age. It’s collective punishment in all senses, by all definitions.[..]
Salwa Abu Lebdeh
Camerawoman and documentary filmmaker
I am a director. I try to show a picture that’s different from the one you see on television that depicts a nation being killed, a nation that lacks life—with only funerals and flags. I show our life: a people with a history, civilization, and heritage. [...]
Michal Cafrey
Lawyer and Senior Advisor to Ministers in the Knesset
I am Israeli, a right-winger, and a feminist. I am not for the building of the Wall, I think Jews and Arabs should co-exist. I don’t see an end or solution right now, but I know my policies. Menachem Begin, a right-wing president, brokered the first peace treaty with an Arab country, Egypt, and it continues to this day. Maybe it’s a cold peace, but it’s a peace for 30 years. [...]
Trude Dothan
Archeologist, author, and professor
When we dig up cities, we get pottery. People were people—they were born, they grew up, they died. Life revolves around this. When we find burial grounds, fortifications, private houses, we get a sense of how they lived, how they ate. The fun of archeology is to make cities and civilizations of the past come alive. People are people are people. [..]
Amal Elsana Alh’jooj
Bedouin spokeswoman and Founder-Director of AJEEC
Now they are teaching adults how to listen. As a shepherd, I listened to everything and developed my senses from the air, earth, moon, and stars. Even though I was often without shoes and it was cold, I still want to send my kids to the field with three sheep and one cow and say, “This is the best school in your life.” [..]
Reem Alshareef
Principal of Cordoba School in Hebron
I adore Hebron, my city, my people, my children, and the school. I refuse to leave. Whatever the circumstances, I insist on staying. My roots are here even though we are now under Israeli control. [...]
Jumana Odeh
Founder-Director of Happy Child Center
I argue with Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints. I say “I am human,” but they don’t want to see me as human. They are in denial. They are there to defend and protect their country. When they pass by hundreds of Palestinians, they don’t want to see the suffering children.
