My Voice Too

My Voice Too is a storytelling project I initiated to create dialogue between Palestinian women from Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Jaffa, exploring what "home" means to each of them. In-person encounters began in September 2023, but the escalation of violence after October 7th made further visits impossible and shook the project to its core. In response, we added a psychosocial support component to help participants process what was happening around them. Under the guidance of writing coach Sheikha, five participants, Mina, Lina, Rawan, Joanna, and Diana, found the courage to keep writing. The project culminated in a collective book, launched at Dar al-Majus in Bethlehem with readings, short films, and live music, an evening of vulnerability, resilience, and reunion for women who had spent two years collaborating without meeting again in person.

Jerusalem Stories

Jerusalem Stories is a documentary filmmaking course I co-created with filmmaker Husam Abu Diab for six young Palestinians from Shuafat refugee camp, teaching concept development, equipment handling, and video editing. Over twelve sessions, participants developed narratives rooted in Jerusalem's culture and history and produced four short documentaries, screened at an internal feedback session and a public movie night. The course gave participants tools to process their own reality through storytelling, built practical filmmaking skills to broaden their opportunities, and brought Palestinian voices to an international audience.

Balladi Art Residency

Balladi Art Residency brought together five young Palestinian women artists from East Jerusalem for an art residency exploring the theme of home: Balladi. Meeting regularly with the known artist and their mentor Nasrin Abu Baker they developed an art exhibition exploring their identity and sense of belonging at the Willy Brandt Center. The project aimed to open doors for young graduates from art school with limited access to opportunities as artists, fostering self-representation and social change through art. The residency culminated in a public exhibition on November 14th.

Jerusalem Mosaic

Jerusalem Mosaic is a series of short videos, portraying people who rarely make it into the spotlight of mainstream media but are essential to the fabric of Jerusalem. As spaces for pluralist, multifaceted narratives shrink in the current political climate, the project asked every participant the story behind their name, to bring out their life beyond the headlines. People carry on with dreams, ambitions, and ordinary daily life even through war and occupation, without normalizing the context itself, and to challenge the narrative of war that so often pushes us toward supporting or justifying it. In doing so, Mosaic aimed to change that narrative and support peace-building efforts and the people living through it.

Women Well-Being Workshop Series

The workshop series was about women empowerment, mental health, and community building. Women in the West Bank have few activities they can attend and come together, and the ongoing pressure affects their physical and mental health. To accommodate those needs, we created a well-being workshop series where women came together to practice relaxation techniques such as yoga and meditation, as well as gathering in a women's circle to share what moved them. The project was created together with Nimala Kharoufeh, who runs the first women's well-being center in Bethlehem.

Transgressing Inner and Outer Spaces

Transgressing Inner and Outer Spaces was an exhibition at the Willy Brandt Center showcasing six young Palestinian artists from the West Bank exploring their identity: what moves them, what stops them, what rejects and what guides them, across continuous encounters between inner and outer space. The opening, with live music from the local band Alkasaat, drawing visitors' attention to the young Palestinian art scene.

RIKMA

RIKMA project was a long-term collaboration between Musrara School of Arts Jerusaelm, Hochschule den Bildenden Künste Saar, and the Willy Brandt Center Jerusalem that brought together Israeli artists and students from the Saarbrücken art university to create together across borders, imagined as human connection woven like fabric: fragile, soft, sometimes tied into a knot, even as national identity pulls people toward enmity. Financed by the ministry of Saaland and curated by Prof. Dr. Christian Bauer, Prof. Maike Fraas, Prof. Georg Winter and myself. Since 2023, the project has grown through online workshops, an artist exchange in Saarbrücken in June 2024 that closed with an exhibition after eight days of working together, and a second exchange in Budapest in June 2025 that produced a live show at Gallery 111. Working alongside participants from Syria, Iran, Israel, and beyond, the group builds trust and working relationships that reach past imposed enemy lines, with RIKMA 2 marking a reunion exactly 365 days after the group's last day together in Saarbrücken.

The Future of Peace: Youth Art Exhibition

The Future of Peace was a youth art exhibition and vernissage at the Willy Brandt Center, curated by the Israeli and Palestinian teenagers Gaya Shiff and Noor Khalila, with work by young artists Naama Levy, Gaya Shiff, Aya Daadle, Nevo Malinsky, Lauren Zahalka, and Amna Foad Hassadie exploring what peace means to their generation. In their own words: "In the middle of the war, we need the reminder that we, as the future generation, can be in peace... We want to show that there is a future and we can see the person who stands in front of us, no matter what." The exhibition took place as part of The People's Peace Summit, organized by It's Time, an unprecedented coalition of 60 Israeli peace and civil society organizations uniting Jewish and Palestinian leaders, members, and partners working toward a political agreement that secures both peoples' rights to self-determination, equality, and free, secure futures. Held in 2025 in Jerusalem, the summit brought together thousands of Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Bedouin in the largest gathering of its kind, with solidarity actions in more than 20 cities worldwide.

Middle East: "We Live in Two Realities"

For Pro Peace, I interviewed Emmanuel Witzthum, an Israeli-German composer and artistic director of Feelbeit, a Palestinian-Israeli cultural center in Jerusalem. We spoke about growing up between German and Israeli identity, how Feelbeit's community responded in the months after October 7th, and the difficulty of holding space for both Israeli and Palestinian artists while living through two very different, painful realities of the same conflict. The conversation also touches on antisemitism, criticism of Israel, and how easily the two get collapsed into one another in public debate. The original interview was conducted and published in German.

Read the full interview on propeace.de (German) →