Moments of freedom

Maen Hammad lives in what he describes as a ‘bubble’. Based in the hilly Palestinian city of Ramallah, the 30-year-old skateboarder and human rights campaigner offers this explanation of his reality: ‘In some ways, you have to go out of your way to see physical violence. Here, I’m under Palestinian Authority control. An Israeli military jeep or battalion could come here in theory, but generally I can carry on with my day assuming that I won’t see a single Israeli.

‘And I’m sort of stuck. If I want to go to any other city, I’d have to go to the main road where there will be a checkpoint, there