Palestine
Surviving Palestine: Life Under Illegal Israeli Military Occupation
Imagine living in the wake of a war that not only occurred before your lifetime, but before the lifetime of your parents. Imagine knowing the aftermath without ever having known the antecedent. The majority of Palestinians living in the occupied territories are under thirty years of age, and they have spent their entire lives in the shadow of a war from their great-grandparents generation. This is a generation whose worldview has been shaped by the context of war and occupation. What stories exist in such a culture? More importantly, how can they be communicated to the world at large? These questions are what lead me to Occupied Palestine.
In the summer of 2007 I spent five weeks extensively traveling throughout the West Bank in order to photograph the daily life of Palestinians living under illegal Israeli military occupation and civilian colonization. As a Palestinian American, it was important to me to be able to document all aspects of Palestinian life, from the oppressive and destructive, to the domestic and mundane, to the celebratory and joyful. Too often in the United States the only images of Palestinians shown in mainstream media are biased and inaccurate depictions of Palestinians as heartless killers who are violently anti-American. The reality in fact is that Palestinians are predominantly non-violent and surprisingly tenacious given the circumstances of their lives. However this perspective is not often depicted by mainstream Western media.
Despite severe human rights violations, economic strangulation, and the slow and systematic ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians from their lands, beauty still lives in occupied Palestine. The people themselves are a testament to will power in the face of injustice as they have developed exceptional coping mechanisms in order to survive severely inhumane conditions. My intention in documenting the survival of the Palestinian people is to educate westerners on the horrific and far-reaching consequences of unresolved war and occupation. I want people to recognize that although the wars of 1948 and 1967 occurred decades ago, Palestinians live in a continual and latent state of post-traumatic stress. I want the beauty, complexity and perseverance of these people to be just as noteworthy as are their mistakes and deaths.
Imagine living in the wake of a war that not only occurred before your lifetime, but before the lifetime of your parents. Imagine knowing the aftermath without ever having known the antecedent. The majority of Palestinians living in the occupied territories are under thirty years of age, and they have spent their entire lives in the shadow of a war from their great-grandparents generation. This is a generation whose worldview has been shaped by the context of war and occupation. What stories exist in such a culture? More importantly, how can they be communicated to the world at large? These questions are what lead me to Occupied Palestine.
In the summer of 2007 I spent five weeks extensively traveling throughout the West Bank in order to photograph the daily life of Palestinians living under illegal Israeli military occupation and civilian colonization. As a Palestinian American, it was important to me to be able to document all aspects of Palestinian life, from the oppressive and destructive, to the domestic and mundane, to the celebratory and joyful. Too often in the United States the only images of Palestinians shown in mainstream media are biased and inaccurate depictions of Palestinians as heartless killers who are violently anti-American. The reality in fact is that Palestinians are predominantly non-violent and surprisingly tenacious given the circumstances of their lives. However this perspective is not often depicted by mainstream Western media.
Despite severe human rights violations, economic strangulation, and the slow and systematic ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians from their lands, beauty still lives in occupied Palestine. The people themselves are a testament to will power in the face of injustice as they have developed exceptional coping mechanisms in order to survive severely inhumane conditions. My intention in documenting the survival of the Palestinian people is to educate westerners on the horrific and far-reaching consequences of unresolved war and occupation. I want people to recognize that although the wars of 1948 and 1967 occurred decades ago, Palestinians live in a continual and latent state of post-traumatic stress. I want the beauty, complexity and perseverance of these people to be just as noteworthy as are their mistakes and deaths.
