In Masaffer Yatta, each month brings new demolitions: homes, wells and sheep enclosures. We are left with few choices: to leave, to demolish our homes, or simply wait. Even when our villages are not destroyed by Israeli occupation forces, they are attacked by settlers who set fires, steal cars and take over our towns.

Many words in Palestinian Arabic carry additional meaning, owing to history, culture and politics.

Greater Israel is not just the idea that Israel has no borders or that Israel’s borders should be in a state of forever expansion, but also that Israel should dominate the countries beyond its borders. This is a brief history of Greater Israel, 1948-present.

In Masaffer Yatta, each month brings new demolitions: homes, wells and sheep enclosures. We are left with few choices: to leave, to demolish our homes, or simply wait. Even when our villages are not destroyed by Israeli occupation forces, they are attacked by settlers who set fires, steal cars and take over our towns.

We are separated by borders, but there have been moments when Minatallah has held me together without being physically present. She once told me exile is not only about borders, but about the distance from everything familiar. “Being far from the people you love is exile in itself,” I remember her saying.

In Masaffer Yatta, each month brings new demolitions: homes, wells and sheep enclosures. We are left with few choices: to leave, to demolish our homes, or simply wait. Even when our villages are not destroyed by Israeli occupation forces, they are attacked by settlers who set fires, steal cars and take over our towns.

Life is still full of challenges under this fragile calm, but Mahmoud's presence gives me the strength to face them. I try to raise him on hope and resilience, to instill in him a love of life, and to make him understand that no matter how long the darkness lasts, rays of sunshine will inevitably rise. 

In late Ottoman Palestine, Jews, Muslims and Christians shared social spaces, celebrated each other's holidays and embraced a common Arab consciousness. Many also aligned around a political vision for the region that transcended confessional boundaries. This is a brief history of Palestine’s golden age, a world before Zionism.

“For them, even a few steps and a laugh were like reclaiming life,” he said….“We couldn’t stop the war, but we could dance through it, even for a few minutes.” 

While Israel’s goals in Lebanon keep changing, as do its tactics, allies and adversaries, the drive to occupy, annex, and control it has remained unchanged. This is a brief history of Israel’s domination of Lebanon.

Children’s toys have become almost nonexistent in Gaza, as the Israeli occupation has prevented their entry … [a small doll] cost around 115 Israeli shekels [USD $38]. When I heard the price, I kept walking with my parents, because I knew my family could not afford that much for a doll.”

Two months before the genocide began in October 2023, Ouda made a decisive shift. She pursued her dream of fashion designing and launched her own line of clothes, Reno Collection … but as daily life collapsed, her project stopped entirely. “There was no room to think about dreams,” she said. “Only about staying alive.” 

“One day in January, a young boy, Anas, just five years old, came to buy a biscuit. It cost three shekels, but he had only one. After a brief pause, Seba smiled and sold him the biscuit for the single shekel he carried, watching him walk away clutching it with quiet satisfaction.”

“I wake up before sunrise and I don’t stop until night,” she said. “There’s no clean water, and the toilets are dirty and unsafe. There’s no privacy when I bathe or sleep … Temporary toilets in the camps are usually little more than holes in the sand, covered with hanging sheets, and shared by dozens of people.”

The Zionist movement continued to evict and displace Arabs and Palestinians throughout the 1920s-1940s, wiping seventy Arab villages off the map and uprooting more than ten thousand Palestinians and Arabs in the process. This is a brief history of the origins of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from their lands, 1920-1947

“We no longer know what to save first. Everything is essential and everything is soaked,” Afnan said. Standing was exhausting, sitting was impossible, and nothing warmed the body except movement, but there was not even enough space to move.”

“The psychological trauma is just as real for animals as it is for people. Many cats shake uncontrollably after airstrikes. Some lose their appetite for days. They develop symptoms just like humans under extreme stress.”

When I finally reached the hotel, I felt life again: electricity, lit streets, unlimited water, and all kinds of food … But I could barely eat…The guilt of having all this while my family had nothing was unbearable.

“We lived three months in constant fear; we slept dressed, ready to run.” Mohammed stopped counting the displacements. “We moved from east Gaza to the middle, then Rafah, then back again – more than ten times.”

When Jewish settlers bought land in Palestine, usually from absentee landlords, they denied Arabs access to grazing pastures and agricultural land, often mistreating them in the process, usually leading to clashes.