In my mind, I often replay the moment we learned “No Other Land” had won an Oscar. My cousins and I leaped with joy, racing through our village of Susiya, shouting, “the Oscar is ours!” at the top of our lungs. I was so proud to see pictures of my cousin Basel Adra and his parents Nasser and Kifah wearing traditional Palestinian dress on the red carpet. Videos of the celebration thrown by the Palestinian community in Los Angeles for Hamdan, Basel, and my father Nasser, filled me with even more pride.

We knew we had succeeded in a powerful act of nonviolent resistance: we made the world pay attention to the state-sponsored violence we endure here in Masafer Yatta on a daily basis.

In Susiya, where I’ve lived all my life, we have faced attacks by settlers and Israeli authorities for decades. My father, Nasser Nawajah, was born in Khirbet Susiya, our ancestral land which sits across the road from where we live now. In 1983, the Israeli settlement of Susya was established on our territory; three years later, the Israeli government expelled all of the Khirbet Susiya’s Palestinian residents after an ancient synagogue was discovered — a convenient pretext for ethnic cleansing.

Since then, we have been forced to rebuild Susiya multiple times, trying to remain as close to our ancestral lands as possible. But today, the government and the settlers are trying to expel us even further, to the Palestinian city of Yatta. This is no coincidence; their goal is to force us out of Area C, which is under total Israeli military and civilian control, and into Area A, which is administered by the Palestinian Authority. In other words, Israel wants to concentrate us into a few small urban enclaves surrounded by settlements.

Never in my life have I felt the government and settlers’ hunger to expel us more intensely than these past few weeks. Since Hamdan Ballal and my father returned from the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles in early March, Susiya has endured relentless attacks, each day more brutal than the last. When settlers came and smashed a CCTV camera in our village a week before the latest violence, I felt that it was a harbinger of something much worse.

The cruel game of the occupation

On March 2, the same morning when I danced with joy, I found myself running for my life by evening. It was the second day of Ramadan, and I was fasting. As I sat down for Iftar, news came of a settler at our neighbor’s home. We scrambled to see what was taking place, only to find not one but a mob of 15 settlers moving from house to house smashing windows, before destroying a solidarity activist’s car.

I nearly cried as I watched what was happening. Exhausted and hungry, having not eaten the whole day, I ran from house to house to check on everyone. But no matter how hard they tried, not even the settlers could extinguish the joy of that day.

Just a few weeks later, on March 17, we suffered yet another settler attack. My father was grazing his sheep in the valley below our village when suddenly, Shem Tov Lusky, a settler who has terrorized our community for years, appeared wielding a knife. Soon, more settlers, many of them masked, swarmed the area and started hurling rocks at the Palestinian residents and the international activists there to protect them.

We immediately called the police. When the officers arrived along with a few soldiers, the settlers scattered. My father approached to explain what had happened, expecting the officers to pursue the settlers. Instead, an officer grabbed him by the shoulder, forced him into their vehicle, and drove away. My five-year-old sister Dalia witnessed it all happen and broke down in tears. Luckily, the police car turned around after a short distance and released him. 

This is the cruel game of the occupation: for having the audacity to expect the police to protect us, my father almost lost his freedom.

The third attack came in the evening of March 25. My mother, Dalia, and I had gone to break the Ramadan fast with relatives in At-Tuwani, a neighboring village, while my father and my two other siblings stayed at home in Susiya.

We had just sat down to eat when the news of a settler attack near our home flashed on my phone. My first instinct was to return immediately, but I knew that as a young Palestinian, I’d be an easy target for the Israeli soldiers and the settlers and would be risking my life. After all, they know that we are the future of non-violent resistance here in Masafer Yatta.

My friend Qassam is 17, like me. That night, he had been breaking the fast at his uncle Hamdan Ballal’s home, when settlers appeared at the doorstep. He witnessed them savagely beating Hamdan. “There was blood on his head and on the ground,” he told me.

When the police and army arrived, Qassam feared for his uncle and wanted to stay with him, but the adults told him to run away as fast as he could to avoid being arrested on false charges, as the army tends to do with young people here. Later that night, that is precisely what happened to Hamdan.

I made the difficult decision to stay in At-Tuwani that night, while my mother and sister left for Susiya. We said goodnight, but I couldn’t sleep; I kept thinking about Hamdan, Khaled, Nasser, and everyone else in Susiya, hoping they were okay. Being away from my home at such a time, even if only for a day, was heart-wrenching.

When will our turn come?

When Basel expressed hope in his Oscar acceptance speech that his two-month old daughter would have a better life than his, without “violence, home demolitions, and forced displacement,” it resonated with me deeply. My sisters, aged 12 and five, deserve a life of safety and freedom; to be able to go to school and sleep at home in peace.

Every night, I go to bed full of uncertainty, half-expecting soldiers to show up and arrest one of us, or settlers to come and destroy our home and our possessions. I watch the occupation forces demolishing homes routinely in villages nearby — in Umm al-Khair, Khallet a-Daba’, and Al-Jawaya — and I wonder when our turn will come.

Susiya wasn’t the only community in Masafer Yatta to be violently reminded of our fragile existence after “No Other Land” won the Oscar. That same day, authorities issued a demolition order for Jorat al-Jamal’s “School of Palestine.” If the school is destroyed, its 140 students would be forced to study far away in Yatta, or give up their education altogether.

My cousin is in the fifth and final grade at this school, and lives right next to it. He heard the news of the demolition order while sitting in class. “I don’t know what will become of my academic life if the school is destroyed,” he told me. “The other schools in Yatta are very far away.”

When Khader Nawajah, the school’s secretary, heard of the order, he immediately filed a complaint atthe police station in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba. “I’m really upset about it, because it is the only school in the area,” he told me. “I am proud of the school and the education it provides — it strengthens the steadfastness of the next generation.”

In response to +972’s inquiry, the Coordination Office of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) stated that the construction of the School of Palestine in Jorat Al-Jamal “is known to the unit’s authorities and is subject to enforcement proceedings, as it was built without approval and in violation of the law. All proceedings are carried out in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations in the area.”

We need the world’s attention

I’ve traveled to the United States twice to testify about the violence, harassment, and home demolitions we endure on a routine basis as children living in Masafer Yatta. During my most recent visit, in September 2024, I went to Washington to meet with Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Mark Pocan, along with university students and interfaith community leaders. Many empathized with our pain, and have used their public platforms to denounce the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta and across the West Bank.

A year later, “No Other Land” has opened people’s eyes to our struggle on a much larger scale than a few meetings with individual congressmembers and community leaders ever could. But this is still not enough. The people of the world must keep watching what is happening in Masafar Yatta, and share what they see. We need the world’s attention, not just when we are winning, but also, and perhaps more than ever, when we are suffering. 

When my father returned home from the award ceremony in Los Angeles, he had to fly through Jordan. In Amman, he bought me a book on Palestinian history. As I was reading through it, I was amazed to find my own family name on a list of those who had lived on this land, here in Susiya, during the British Mandate.

To see this clear, documented proof that we’ve been here for generations meant everything. Especially now, when Israel keeps trying to demolish our homes, bulldoze our schools, crush our spirits, and erase us — both our history and our future.