I was almost 21 years old and in my final year of an undergraduate programme in photography at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in occupied Jerusalem when several stabbing attacks took place following the murder of Muhannad al-Halabi by Israeli police in early October 2015 in the Old City.
It became my mission to find my own way to resist this oppression and liberate my conscience rather than passively observe the sacrifices of my people
The stabbing attacks were the result of the escalation in Israeli settler and police violence against Palestinians, which reached a turning point when Jewish settlers burned down the Dawabsheh family home in the middle of the night in the West Bank village of Duma, murdering a young couple, Saad and Riham, along with their 18-month-old son Ali, and gravely injuring their four-year-old son Ahmed.
That same year, East Jerusalem witnessed daily violence against young Palestinian men by Israeli occupation forces, from humiliating body searches to violent arrests based on mere “suspicion” and extrajudicial killings of suspects. Palestinian worshippers who happened to be at the scene were also subjected to the indiscriminate firing of live ammunition, tear gas canisters, and rubber-coated bullets, to the extent that the Damascus Gate became known as the “Gate of the Martyrs”.
Neither women nor young girls were exempt from this brutality. Fatima Hajiji, who was 16 years old, was killed by Israeli occupation forces for allegedly attempting to stab an occupation officer in 2017, and 49-year-old Siham Nimr, was summarily executed in the same spot at the Damascus Gate.
Israeli prisons have been full of Palestinians since that period.
After finishing my studies, I travelled to Paris to present my photography project and begin planning new ones. On the banks of the Seine, I worked in a studio in the International City of the Arts, which opened to assist Palestinian artists thanks to the efforts of the renowned poet Mahmoud Darwish and literary critic Edward Said.