In 1967, a young Palestinian scholar is invited to London to lecture on his mastery of a William Wordsworth poem. But after he arrives, war breaks out back home and he's forced to decide between staying in London or going back home to his family where uncertainty and suffering are guaranteed. These are events that begin The Vagrant Trilogy, a show currently playing at The Public Theatre. The audience is taken down two different paths: one where Adham chooses to stay in London, and one that leads him to a refugee camp in Lebanon. The three-act play has been in the making for over a decade now. Unsettled spoke to actor Hadi Tabbal and playwright Mona Mansour about the making of The Vagrant Trilogy.

In 1967, a young Palestinian scholar is invited to London to lecture on his mastery of a William Wordsworth poem. But after he arrives, war breaks out back home and he's forced to decide between staying in London or going back home to his family where uncertainty and suffering are guaranteed. These are events that begin The Vagrant Trilogy, a show currently playing at The Public Theatre. The audience is taken down two different paths: one where Adham chooses to stay in London, and one that leads him to a refugee camp in Lebanon. The three-act play has been in the making for over a decade now. Unsettled spoke to actor Hadi Tabbal and playwright Mona Mansour about the making of The Vagrant Trilogy.

Last week, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued an opinion that could lead to one of the largest population transfers in recent history. After a decades-long legal battle, the court gave the Israeli military a green light to evacuate the residents of eight villages in Masafer Yatta — Palestinians who have lived for generations on land the state now claims as a “military firing zone.”

A few weeks ago, we published an interview with activist Ali Awad about the campaign to save Masafer Yatta. Unsettled producer Max Freedman spoke to Ali again to get his reaction to the court’s new ruling.

Ein al-Beida is a fresh water spring that used to be the main source of water for several Palestinian villages — until Israeli settlers moved in and claimed the spring as their own. On a cold Friday morning, two hundred Palestinians and Jews march together to the spring to take it back. Then the army shows up.

Unsettled producer Max Freedman reports from the center of the action: what goes according to plan, what doesn’t, and what happens next.

Lilly is a young activist from North London who has been to the West Bank many times before — just never with other Jews. In this episode of “The Birthday Party,” Lilly talks about the teenage rebellion that first brought her to Palestine, and why she now believes she can have the greatest impact within her Jewish community.

Unsettled producer Max Freedman follows Lilly and other activists with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence as they get to know the people and the landscape of the South Hebron Hills, and prepare to stand alongside Palestinians as they directly challenge the Israeli occupation forces.

Bob first visited Israel in 1969, when he was on leave from his U.S. military service in Vietnam. He was raised in a Zionist home; he has relatives who proudly live in former Palestinian houses; he once volunteered on an IDF base. But now, at 71 years old, Bob is entering the West Bank for the first time.

He’s one of 44 diaspora Jews who have come to the South Hebron Hills with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence to practice co-resistance with Palestinians. In the second episode of “The Birthday Party,” producer Max Freedman spends time with Bob as he confronts the reality of occupation — and his own identity.

In this special miniseries from Unsettled, producer Max Freedman spends nine days in the South Hebron Hills with Palestinians and Jews working together to oppose and obstruct the occupation. This trip, organized by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, culminates in a dramatic direct action known by a code name: “the birthday party.”

In the first episode, Max gets to know Tariq, a Palestinian teacher from the village of Umm al-Khair. Umm al-Khair is surrounded on three sides by an Israeli settlement, and the residents live under constant threat of violence and demolition. Tariq explains how his family came to live in this area, how he became an activist, and why he believes in co-resistance with Jewish allies.

On March 15, Israel’s High Court of Justice heard a case that could lead to one of the largest forced population transfers in recent history. For more than 20 years, Israel has been trying to expel the residents of 12 Palestinian villages in a part of the West Bank called Masafer Yatta. The state claims they need the land for a military firing zone. If the court agrees, 1,300 Palestinians might be removed from their homes.

In this episode, producer Max Freedman speaks to Ali Awad and Maya Rosen about this decades-long legal battle and what’s at stake. Ali and Maya are both organizers of the Save Masafer Yatta campaign, which aims to stop this eviction by turning Masafer Yatta into a household name.

Before there was a state of Israel, there was the Jewish National Fund. The JNF, or Keren Kayamet L’Yisrael in Hebrew, was founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. Today, most American Jews know the JNF for its tin tzedakah boxes and tree planting campaigns. But KKL-JNF owns 13% of the land in Israel — which it allocates exclusively to Jews — and has been involved in evicting Palestinians in the Negev, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.

When Hisham Abu-Hawash ended his 141-day hunger strike last month, he had been imprisoned by Israel for more than a year without charges or a trial. He was just one of about 500 Palestinians held in “administrative detention.”

In this episode, we speak to Milena Ansari, International Advocacy Officer at Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Milena explains Israel’s military court system and how Palestinians are fighting to end administrative detention.

Mahmoud Muna is part of the family that runs the Educational Bookshop: the only English language bookstore in East Jerusalem. The current iteration of the Bookshop was opened in the 1980s by Mahmoud’s father, Ahmed. Today, the shop has multiple locations and thousands of titles on its shelves.

When Unsettled producer Max Freedman visited Jerusalem at the start of 2020, he stopped by the Educational Bookshop and sat down with Mahmoud. In this episode of Unsettled, they talk about the history of the bookshop and what it means — to Palestinians in East Jerusalem and people around the world.

Unsettled producer Asaf Calderon grew up in Israel in a household of “smolanim”: leftists. His parents raised him to think critically and to fight against injustice, even if it means going against what most people consider normal. But today, even while their values remain the same, there is a deep ideological rift between them when it comes to Zionism. In this episode, Asaf sits down with his parents, Nissim and Rivka Calderon, to learn about their political development and discuss whether Zionism is compatible with left politics and Palestinian rights.

This summer, New York City’s Astor Place hosted a bat mitzvah ceremony unlike any other: the Anti-Zionist Bat Mitzvah, an all-day musical extravaganza created by Morgan Bassichis and Ira Khonen Temple. The event started with tutoring sessions on Palestinian popular resistance and the weaponization of the Torah, and ended with a celebratory dance to “Hava Nagila” remixed as an anti-police anthem.

In this episode of Unsettled, producer Ilana Levinson talks to Morgan and Ira about their collaboration, and the importance of joy in collective liberation.

In October, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz declared six Palestinian civil society organizations “terror groups." In this episode of Unsettled, we look closely at one of those groups, Al-Haq: its founding principles, its role in Palestinian society, and the impact of Israel's terror designation on its ability to continue documenting Israeli human rights abuses.

Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian-American writer, educator, and editor. Her published work includes poetry, children’s books and essays, and she has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle. She has also spent decades as an educator, visiting classrooms all around the world.

In this episode, producer Emily Bell speaks with Naomi Shihab Nye about finding inspiration in her father's notebooks, processing grief, and writing about Palestine. Naomi shares a selection of old and new works, including two from her book "Transfer."