Age: 26
Residence: Samoa – Hebron
Occupation: Student of sport at graduation stage
Family & Childhood: I have four brothers and three sisters among which I am the eldest. My father got married and directly traveled to Saudi Arabia in 1979 to work as a teacher, and I and all my siblings were born there. When it was time for us to go to university we had to come back to Hebron in order to enroll in university because as noncitizens in Saudi Arabia we could not go to university there. My father became a teacher in a local school in Samoa.
Sport: I started playing football at the age of 14 when I was in S. A. and after coming to Samoa I joined the local sports club to continue playing football. Through our coach I was introduced to the Peres Center and was given the chance to join their Cricket trainings and became their Cricket coach. I now have 17 kids in my team.
Politics & the “other side”: I used to see the other side as a delaying, torturing instrument, especially to me. When I was a student it could take me 40 minutes to get to my university but because of the checkpoints it used to take me more than three hours and sometimes the checkpoints were closed so I had to rent a place to stay near my university in order to be on time to classes.
After working with the Peres Center, my views have changed and I am seeing people now according to what they are; I am meeting different people in a different context than the military one. Therefore, I decided deep in my heart that I am going to judge people according to what they are and how they treat me and not according to their backgrounds; nationality, religion …etc.
