Muntaha Abu Dayyeh

Growing up in a Christian family in Beit Jala, a city of Christians, Muslims and those with no faith made Muntaha wonder about how communities and affiliations are formed, which led her to study Sociology with Journalism at Bethlehem University. 

At university Muntaha became an activist for gender equality and youth rights. After graduation she worked with different national and international NGOs and now is a project coordinator for childrens’ rights.

Muntaha grew up under the Israeli Occupation. Her first interaction with Israelis was in 1999 during her first trip to Jerusalem. The soldiers went to the bus asked the Palestinians to get out for security checks, separated her from her mom and started to ask her questions in a serious and rough way. Muntaha still remembers how frightened she felt, and it was then she finally realized what ‘the occupation’ meant. 

In 2000, when the second Palestinian uprising broke out, Beit Jala was one of the cities that was heavily attacked by the Israeli soldiers, and many people were killed in Bethlehem province. Consequently, Muntaha believed that liberating Palestine from the ‘Riiver to the Sea’ was the only solution for Palestinians. However, in 2017 she met an Israeli group in Germany and she started to realize that that not all Israelis are the same as the occupation soldiers. In 2021, Muntaha met Nour Awad who introduced her to Roots and since then she has been a volunteer.