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Hana Salah on why she writes

Al-Monitor contributor Hana Salah shares her thoughts on journalism.

A Jewish boy lifts his hand to prevent a Palestinian from taking his picture near a police barrier cordoning off a building the day after Israeli police evicted Jewish settlers who occupied it in the West Bank city of Hebron April 5, 2012. Israeli police evicted Jewish settlers on Wednesday from the building they said they had bought from a Palestinian in the heart of Hebron, a frequent flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK - Tags: POLITICS MILITARY CIVIL UNREST) - RT
A Jewish boy lifts his hand to prevent a Palestinian woman from taking his picture in the West Bank city of Hebron, April 5, 2012. — REUTERS/Ammar Awad

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?

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