Salha Hamdeen

Salha Hamdeen Jerusalem - Sona Adeek Salha Hamdeen won the “Hans Christian" creativity award for imagination and the story was among 1200 participants from all over the world. Salha is a creative and dreamy child, she lived half her life far from her father as they were parted by the occupation, it was her imaginative dreams that won her this global award. Salha is a 14 year old girl who lives in a mud hut near occupied Jerusalem, she said to Arabs today: "I imagined that the sheep Hantosh took me away from the suffering of the Bedouin to Spain, where life is luxurious and children live their lives away from the Israeli occupation and their violations against the rights of Palestinians, especially children.” "There in Spain I meet the Argentinian football player Messi, who I have known through my work for some magazines at one of my relatives’ houses near the city of Nablus and bring him with me to Arab al-Jahalin to see the suffering that we live under in Palestine in general and in Arab Jahalin particular." She tells her story: "Messi tries to assist Bedouin children in making a football field to play with them, he offers her a job in Barcelona, ??and asks her to travel with him, but she rejects the tempting offer, as she said because she looks after a group of sheep and she love them very much and cannot leave them because there is no one to look after them as her father is detained in an Israeli jail for 25 years."  In Salha’s dreams she is a child like the other children of Palestine. She is looking for a better and brighter life. Why not? She is a child who lives in a Bedouin community that lacks basic features like electricity, water, clean air, and has to flee from the rain in the winter. The Israeli occupation destroys their tin houses, close the roads and threaten displacement