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| Mahmoud Rabbani, born in Palestine, with his daughter, Nihal Rabbani, who is wearing a traditional embroidered Palestinian dress. |
"November or December 1988 with my dad, celebrating Palestine's Declaration of Independence.
Thirty years ago, when the First Intifada received worldwide media attention, and we slowly started being portrayed as human beings instead of terrorists for the first time ever, there was a sparkle of hope.
This was before the Oslo Accords, before the apartheid wall was erected, before the West Bank quadrupled in settlements, before the Palestinian Authority was formed, before the Gaza Strip became a mining field for the Israeli military to practice ILLEGAL chemical warfare on the Palestinian population, before a small proportion of a lost generation succumbed to suicide bombings, before Hamas would become a household name and replace Israel's accountability for its war crimes (it had only been in existence for a year in 1988) and before I even set foot in my parents' birthplace.
Shortly after this photo was taken, my father visited Palestine for the first time since he was thirteen years old, about forty years after his family was expelled from their homeland in 1948 and forced to escape to refugee camps in Lebanon."