Dinsdag 4 september 2018 “Hi Ahmed: hoe gaat het met je?” “Hi vriend, het gaat goed, maar we weten dat er iets verschrikkelijks gaat gebeuren. We maken ons zorgen want we kunnen nergens naartoe. We hebben het gevoel dat we geen enkele controle hebben. We horen dat de Russen, de Turken, de Amerikanen en de […]
Sami* is suddenly caught up by the reality as the news breaks on July 25: ISIS has attacked Sweida. While a series of bombings have been conducted in the city centre, ISIS militants, in a carefully coordinated operation, have entered several villages on the east of the city and murdered entire families. I spoke to […]
John, 24, is a student at university in Jerusalem, and aspires to be a television journalist. He has lived his whole life in the Old City of Jerusalem. In terms of resistance, living there is essential to him: “I’m living here, I’m Palestinian, living in Jerusalem. I think that’s the biggest resistance that can happen”. […]
Ghadeer, 31, is an architect, designer and planning specialist. She is intrigued by the social and spatial fragmentation among young Palestinians in Jerusalem, and actively tries to contest it. Ghadeer experienced this fragmentation first-hand when she tried to move into neighbourhoods that were not related to her own community: “I couldn’t fit in any of […]
George, 28, grew up in Jerusalem. His father is from Beit Jala, which is between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and his mother is from Jerusalem. After finishing university in the United States, where he got a degree in Business and Accounting, George returned to Palestine in his early 20s to get involved in activism and resistance. […]
Hamza, 29, grew up in Shu ‘afat refugee camp, Jerusalem. Though still referred to as a refugee camp, after decades of existence this area has become a neighborhood in Jerusalem, where facilities and infrastructure are nowhere near good enough. After a challenging youth in Jerusalem, and some experience of working abroad, Hamza now works with […]
Salam, 24, is a student of Middle Eastern Studies in Jerusalem. Born and raised in Al-Issawiyya, a neighborhood in the east of Jerusalem, Salam experiences the issues young Palestinians face on a daily basis. Witnessing an increase in house demolishing in her neighborhood, she feels frustrated not only with the Israeli government, but also with […]
A blood curdling photograph on the front page of a major Dutch newspaper. An aid worker wearing a gas mask carries a poisoned child. The image could be from an apocalyptic landscape by Dutch painter Jeroen Bosch. You can’t look at it. But there are others. Young children choking in silence. Desperate doctors trying to […]
Dear Friends, In the photo you can see my house — totally burnt and destroyed by Russian airstrikes on Douma yesterday. I was ‘evacuated’ from Douma to Idlib a week ago and I was waiting for my family to follow me. Unfortunately I have now lost contact with them. Since early morning I have been […]
“My parents didn’t want me to come”, confesses a 20-year-old from Bosnia and Herzegovina. This statement is illustrative of the taboo that still rests on open dialogue on the conflicts in the Western Balkans in the 1990s. There are many different formal and informal versions of history of the 1990s wars. Politicians, media, many use […]