Hana Salah has been writing for Al-Monitor since June 2013. A Palestinian financial journalist based in Gaza, she previously worked with Palestinian newspapers and Turkey's Anadolu News Agency.

Al-Monitor:  Why did you decide to become a journalist?

Salah:  Ever since I was young, I had ambitions of becoming a journalist, simply because I was born in Palestine and it’s one of the most eventful places in the world. I was born around the end of the intifada in 1990, and grew up during the collapse of the Oslo Accord with the Palestinian Authority. I was 10 years old when the intifada began in 2000, and lived through all the heated political events and the Israeli siege, which began when I was 16 years old. In addition, there were the massacres, the invasions and the wars, which were a major reason for making me think of journalism as a future profession, to be able to cover these and other events and convey them to the world with professionalism and credibility.

Al-Monitor:  Did you have female role models to look up to when you were first starting out? Who?