Mohammed, 18, from the village of Al-Mirkiz. Mohammed's hand was blown off when he came across an unexploded grenade that the military left on his land during a weapons training.

Mohammed, 18, from the village of Al-Mirkiz. Mohammed's hand was blown off when he came across an unexploded grenade that the military left on his land during a weapons training.

“I lost my life while I'm still alive. Locked in my bed, I am unable to look around my village or into the future.”
Harun Abu Aram, 25, Al-Rakeez, West Bank

In 1987, Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the army to “break the arms and legs” of Palestinians who dared to resist the occupation. This project tells the story of those who have been maimed by Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and how a scarred body is both the living memory of a violent past and a testament to the present struggle to survive.

Masafer Yatta, a 35,000 dunam region of the southern West Bank in Palestine, is inhabited largely by agricultural and shepherding communities. For generations, the residents of Masafer Yatta have fought against the dispossession of their land and the destruction of their communities, as the Israel has worked to ethnically cleanse and control Palestinians throughout the West Bank. This project aims to document the history of Masafer Yatta through the bodies and stories of its residents. It analyzes the ways that maiming has been used as a strategic tool to stifle resistance and the impact, individually and communally, that practices of disabling have had on the region.