❝I am 31 years old, from Ash Shuja'iyeh neighbourhood in Gaza city. 

❝During the war last summer [2014], I was documenting the war through my camera lens. Despite being in constant danger, I felt it was my duty to show the world how my people were suffering.

❝My house was totally destroyed, and I am now an internally displaced person.

❝I work at a local news agency in the Gaza Strip and volunteer with number of news sites, but originally studied Medical Technology. I changed to photojournalism when I discovered I had a talent for it, and have won six awards to date despite the absence of photography courses in Gaza. 

❝Recently, I won a World Humanitarian Summit photo contest arranged by the OCHA Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa with a picture from the 2014 hostilities of an injured Palestinian child, Dalia Khalifa. The prize for the winning photo was a camera.

❝I first saw Dalia in the hospital. I was inspired by the picture of the Afghan girl which won the World Press Photo Award some years ago, and I was contemplating how I can best express the feeling of the war through the prism of this little girl’s face.

❝The girl was only nine years old. Like many other children in Gaza, she was injured while sleeping, when a shell hit her home.❞

(August 2015)