I don't think there should be a Palestinian state because I don't believe in states.

People in power tend to find poetry dangerous to them because it is dislocating, they can't catch it, can't control it. They prefer coherence, what's blunt and has clarity.

Israel, the Israelis, and the rest of the world have been brainwashed. They don't think of pre-1948, they have no idea Palestinians were in Israel, who we were before '48. As if we were born in 1948 according to them. They have no notion that we had a country, houses, rebelled against the Ottomans and the British. They think history in that region started in that moment.

I try to use fiction in order to reduce the potentiality of something being true. We produce our own memories so I'm not sure of truth.

If a person just takes what is socio-political and geographical from the themes of my films then that's not enough. But if the person goes out of the theatre and, for example, makes the dinner he's eating later on, extra nice then I feel that I have succeeded. We have this urge to anaesthetize the moment we're living in.

To think that we are disconnected in some way serves the occupation whether it's through indifference or a distancing. It is a colonial approach of making you a subject and them the spectators. That is disturbing and counterproductive. And then suddenly they are surprised or find it alienating that the microcosmic effects of Palestine are happening in the U.S., France, and England, whether it's from the Islamic movements or immigration factors. Keeping a false purity of their countries will harm them eventually.

I am more at peace than I've ever known myself to be. My connectedness to the world is more intense. I am more attentive to the humanity around me.