Palestinian Law, Human Rights, & Palestinian Refugees Internships

Hi everyone here is Carol from Switzerland. I’m a physiotherapist and I chose the Medicine & Healthcare Programme of the Excellence Center.
During my Programme at the EC I had the chance to visit some places in Hebron, as hospitals, refugee camps, and local organizations. I participated in some presentations about the Healthcare system and they gave me the opportunity to organize a workshop about health topics.
The Arabic lessons give me the chance to communicate in a certain way with my host family and the people around me. Of course practice in everyday life was helpful for learning new words and repeating the others. I also learned useful idioms for everyday life.
The time spent at the EC was instructive and interesting, all the staff of the center was very kind and of course the Arabic teacher too. Getting involved in this Programme led me the opportunity to get in touch with others International Volunteers, we had time to share our experiences and to taste the local life.
During my stay in Palestine, on my days off, I visited some places like Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah also with my host family. Travelling around Palestine and its nature was suggestive, I had the chance to admire its amazing sunsets on the houses rooftops and go through its beautiful hills.
Living in a host family was the best part of the experience. This gives me the chance to practice and learn Arabic every day and to have a full immersion in Hebron's culture. We spent a lot of time together, I learned how to cook some typical dishes, how to dance on particular occasions like graduation parties and how people in Hebron live their life. Palestinian people in general are very kind and they always try to help you in all the ways they know.
I had some reserve before leaving home but I never felt unsafe in Palestine in general. Traveling from Ben Gurion to Hebron was easier than my expectations and all the people I met were very polite and they made my trip more comfortable. I felt completely safe also in Hebron of course as in every other place in the world you have to pay attention especially to the traffic and how to cross the street.
I really enjoyed my time in Palestine. The food and the nature around were amazing, of course the food was my favourite thing.
Getting in touch with another culture can be harder than we think but for sure it is worth it and thanks to this experience I learned how to be patient and flexible. I would say that my time in Palestine was very interesting and changed my view, caused by the media, about this place. The Excellence Center gave me the chance to discover a beautiful place.
I recommend the Center to every person curious about life in Palestine and ready to learn some Arabic. The center offers you the occasion of fully living in this place.

My name is Elizabeth and I’m a 21 year old college student from the United States. At
the Excellence Center, I participated in the Human Rights Program for two months. At my
university in the U.S., I study Arabic, Middle Eastern Culture, and Islam, but I also have taken
many courses about Palestinian literature, film, and history and am involved in Palestinian
activism with a group of students on my campus.
At the Excellence Center, I attended regular visits to companies, organizations,
government offices, and important cultural sites. Some of my favorite visits were to Hebron’s old
city, the UN OCHA office, and the Human Rights Defenders office. Became I am also interested
in Palestinian art, some of my other favorite visits were to various art studios around Hebron
where I was able to meet a wide variety of Palestinian artists including a painter, oud player,
glass worker, stop motion film-maker, and stone carver.
Along with site visits, I also received Arabic instruction every week and taught English in
Al-Fawwar Refugee Camp. I had previously studied Modern Standard Arabic for two years and
my lessons at the center allowed me to focus more on the spoken Palestinian dialect. Between
my Arabic lessons and living with a host family, I was able to pick up many new dialect words
and phrases. My Arabic teacher was also incredibly flexible and crafted our lessons around what
I already knew and what I wanted to learn. Teaching English also provided me with more
opportunities to practice my Arabic and I had a wonderful experience teaching my class of
middle schoolers for a few weeks.
The environment at the Excellence Center is very warm and welcoming. Every single
morning I was greeted by local students playing outside, teachers and volunteers hanging out on
the steps, and the staff working inside. Most days, once I was done with my responsibilities at
the center, I would find myself in a group of international volunteers and local staff members
alike on my way to a restaurant or cafe. Despite the large number of volunteers at the center
throughout the summer, I felt like the staff at the center were very attuned to my individual
needs. Osama made sure that I got to see everything I wanted to see in Hebron during my time at
the center and Marwa always made sure that I knew I could go to her with any problems that
might arise.
Outside of my time at the center, I spent weekends in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah,
Nablus, Jericho, and Jaffa. There was almost always a big group of volunteers heading
someplace for the weekend and people were always willing and eager to give hostel
recommendations and to share service rides. Each city in Palestine has its own unique character
and I definitely recommend trying to visit as many places as you can!
I felt very safe in Palestine. People here are very eager to help you, give you rides, and
invite you to their homes and I always felt safe accepting those things from people I had just met.
In fact, my other international friends and I often marveled at how safe we felt in situations that
we would normally avoid in our home countries. While I found Palestine to be a very safe place,
of course I do recommend that female volunteers retain the same levels of caution and wariness
that they would in any other country. I never walked home alone after dark, told my friends
where I was going, and texted them when I got home safe. As a foreign woman, you should
expect lots of attention from men and boys and should know that they will be much quicker to
speak to you than they are to local women. While I did receive unwanted attention, I never once
felt like I was in danger here in Palestine.
Living in Hebron and with a host family was a very positive experience. I spend Eid
al-Adha with my host family, went on a family vacation to Jericho, attended weddings and
graduation parties, and overall felt very included in local Palestinian life. I quickly felt like I was
part of the family and felt at home living with them. My host “mom” worked for the Hebron
Governorate and she was able to set up a meeting between the Excellence Center volunteers and
the governor of Hebron. Along with all of the fun activities that I joined with my host family, we
were also able to have many conversations about the occupation and the reality of life in
Palestine that were more in depth than any other conversations I had.
My favorite experiences from living in Palestine came from my friendship with a local
artist here in Hebron. We first visited his studio as a group from the center, but I was later able to
return to his studio to paint (we graffitied a bench that now lives in a shoe store in Hebron) and
he also introduced me to other Palestinian artists. I was even able to go with him to Bethlehem
for a competition between young Palestinian artists in the Banksy Walled Off Hotel where I met
Sliman Mansour. Another one of my favorite experiences was when I got to meet the rapper
Tamer Nafar, who I’ve researched for the past year, after a concert of his in Jaffa.
My overall experience at the Excellence Center was very positive. Through the
Excellence Center, I met wonderful people from Hebron and from all around the world. The
volunteers who come to the Excellence Center, while their backgrounds are wildly diverse, come
with a shared set of values and a shared commitment to the Palestinian cause. The staff at the
Excellence Center are also incredible and I made many friends among staff members here. I
learned so much about the occupation and the human rights situation here through lectures and
visits that the Excellence Center organized. I would certainly recommend the Excellence Center
to anyone who was interested in visiting Palestine and I absolutely loved my time here.
After two months in Palestine, I am still astounded by the overwhelming kindness and
generosity of the people here despite the realities of the occupation. I stood in the wreckage of
demolished homes, watched IDF soldiers confront my friends, and spoke to many people whose
family members have been killed. Still, the kindness of people in Hebron does not waver. I will
always be in awe of the resilient spirit here, whether it manifests itself as a commitment to teach
English to a younger generation, a dedication to documenting and disseminating events that take
place here, or the creation of profound and beautiful art

This programme gives you the opportunity to join on average about two field trips to organisations that work in occupied Palestine. Those range from international organisations like the UN or the ICRC to local activist groups. Furthermore, we visited factories producing local goods and businesses, as Hebron is the commercial centre of Hebron.

As part of the programme you participate in about a 3 hour Arabic lesson a week in a small group. While those lessons help to learn some basic Arabic don’t expect to get fluent… For that you should participate in the Intensive Arabic programme for at least two months and study hard! Don’t worry you will also have the opportunity to participate in some of the Human Rights activities.

As there are many international students at the centre, it is great place to find friends and exchange the experiences you made in Palestine. The staff at the centre is very helpful, albeit you might have to drive your one programme.

On the weekends you can go on self organised trips, with friends you made at centre or alone. Everything within Palestine is easily reachable and not too expensive. If you are here for a longer period, you can even go to Jordan and visit Petra and Wadi Rum.

In Hebron, I shared a modern apartment with under students from the excellence centre. The apartment was great and had everything we needed. Also, as Hebron is the economic hub, you can get anything you need from local shops.

Hebron and Palestine is extremely safe place to visit. While the idea of occasionally having to pass checkpoints might be frightening at first - it really isn’t. As a foreigner you most certainly will nicht face any problems.

My time in Palestine was great, I met many interesting people, had some really good food and was able to travel throughout the country. I can recommend the centre to someone who wants to learn about the situation in Palestine or who wants to learn and improve his Arabic speaking skills.

My name is Tereza. This summer I decided to participate in Law Internship provided by the Excellence Center in Hebron.
I was always interested in situation of Palestinian people, and I took this as an opportunity to practice and get better in Arabic and learn more about the applicable law in Palestine. When I considered possibilities to travel abroad and learn Levantine Arabic, I basically didn’t consider for visiting any other country than Palestine.
Palestinian people are very kind and hospitable. My stay with host family is amazing, all members of family are very caring and nice, keen to help me with Arabic and excited to practice English and get better in that. The one month stay allowed me to focus on Palestinian dialect more and get better in that, as well as travelling and attending various activities provided by the Center. I am very glad I could also visit various places and institutions (as a part of my program), as Hebron Governorate, UNRWA, Red Cross and many others. This part of my program in the Center was one of the most helpful regarding understanding the situation in Hebron, and at the same time making this experiment unique.
I really enjoyed my Arabic lessons. My teacher Mahmoud was the best teacher I have ever had for any foreign language, and I am leaving with the feeling I got much better in understanding and speaking Arabic.
During my stay, I had possibility to travel to Ramallah and Nabulus with my host family, to Jericho and Jerusalem on my own, and to Bethlehem, Batir and Mar Saba within the trip organized by the Center.
Regarding safety – Hebron is safe city. All the people around me, including the host family are making sure I feel comfortable and relaxed. I feel safe in this place and very welcomed. There are absolutely no concerns about my safety in Palestine as a foreigner.
During my stay in Hebron, I focused mainly on topics related to my studies, meaning law and Arabic language. There is no better place to improve my skills in Arabic language then around natives. Regarding my law internship – as many European lawyers and law students would agree with me, we have a very little knowledge of law systems outside our countries or Europe. I consider this as a unique possibility to understand better the sources of Palestinian law, its application, division, and have a possibility to talk with the local lawyers. The applicable law in Palestine is often a compound from different sources, including neighboring countries and Ottoman empire. During the lectures, I focused mainly on Sharia law, system of courts in Palestine and also the political situation here.
The Excellence Center is doing their best to provide all important information on their website beforehand, so once you arrived, you can already feel like in your second home. I would recommend to others to participate at any program provided by the Center.

I am a university student from the US and I loved volunteering at the Excellence Center. Unfortunately, I could only stay for a week, but I wish I could stay longer, and I hope I can come back in the future to volunteer for a longer period of time. I found Hebron to be a fun and social city and enjoyed meeting many Palestinians and internationals through my time at the Center. I also felt very safe and welcomed by locals who were excited to see foreigners visiting and working in the city. Everywhere I went people would say hello and welcome me to Hebron.

I also loved my host family. I stayed with family members of people who work at the center about a 5 minute drive away. Each morning me and my 2 roommates would take a taxi to the center for breakfast with local Palestinians and volunteers from all over the world. During my time at the center, there were volunteers from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Each day at the center is different. On some days I would take "field trips" to human rights sites like the UNRWA building or Hebron government buildings and community centers. Other days I would teach English at the center or travel to nearby towns/villages to teach children there. You can definitely mold your own experience at the center and do the things you are most interested in.

Overall, I had a great experience, and hope to come back one day soon. If you have any questions about the program, the staff is so helpful and want to make sure you have a positive experience.

Hi, my name is Fionn, and I come from Belfast, Ireland. I graduated from Cambridge University last year, where I studied Palestinian literature, like Darwish and Kanafani. This made me fall in love with my Palestine, but the empathy I felt towards the Palestinian cause was often contradicted by the distorted image of Palestine in Western media. For this reason, I chose the ‘Journalism and Media Program’ at the Excellence Center.
I am really glad I chose this program. There were many journalists who came in and spoke to us, and we also visited radio stations. I even made some connections with journalists who invited me to work alongside them, and I probably learned the most about Palestinian media in this way. Aside from this, there were many human rights related activities organised by the Center, including several tours, a visit to a displaced Bedouin village outside Hebron, trips to refugee camps and meetings with human rights activists. All these visits were eye-opening for us: even though I knew about the suffering of the Palestinian people before I came, witnessing it was a surreal experience.
I really enjoyed my Arabic lessons at the Center. Even though I knew no Arabic before I came, my teacher Dallia was unbelievably nice and patient, and I felt like I learned very quickly with her. When she unfortunately had to stop teaching me due to a serious family illness, the Center promptly found me another teacher, Anas. Like all the Palestinians who work at the Center, he is friendly, funny and genuinely talented at teaching.
It may sound like a cliché, but the Center really does feel like a family. Many of the volunteers, like me, had never travelled alone before, and so we were initially nervous, before Osama, Marwa and the rest of the staff made us feel immediately at home. You meet people from all around the world here, yet everyone shares a common love of travel and desire to learn more about Palestine. Before the end of your first week here, you know you have made friends for life. There is a fantastic atmosphere at the Center. You are never bored here: even when you have free time, there is always someone to chat and joke around with.
I will never forget the Palestinian willingness to laugh, at almost everything. I think it was so important for me and others to not only learn about the occupation and suffering, but also about the incredible optimism and friendliness of the Palestinian people. My host family were amazing, and did everything they could to make me feel at home. There is strong sense of pride here—not just of Palestine, but of Hebron itself. I am really glad I chose Hebron to visit and, as a woman, I felt completely safe here. To be honest, I felt more safe than any other major city I have visited in Europe.
One of the funniest moments of my experience was when a famous Palestinian Tiktoker visited the Center. I had been in Palestine for less than a week, and only knew a couple of phrases in Arabic— one of which was alhamdulillah (the common response to ‘How are you?’). The Tiktoker, when filming the Center, suddenly put the camera on me, and said ‘Good morning’ (sabah alkhayr). In the video, you can see the panic in my eyes as I reply alhamdulillah, although I was fairly proud that I’d managed to say anything at all in Arabic. Everyone looked confused. The celebrity continued to question me in a torrent of Arabic. I froze, widened my eyes, and began to laugh hysterically.

By the end of the day, every Palestinian I had met so far had seen the video, and shouted ‘alhamdulillah’ every time they saw me. It was probably one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, but the endless banter that followed perfectly encapsulates the familial, jokey atmosphere of the Center in general. If you come here, it will not only be one of the most informative experiences of your life, but you will also become part of something really special. To use an Irish colloquialism, the craic at the Center is always, always great. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone.

My name is Carrie, and I’m from America. I am currently pursuing a degree in international relations, with focuses in political science and Spanish. While I was at the Excellence Center in Palestine I participated in the Human Rights Volunteer Program.

As part of the Human Rights Volunteer Program I met with local human rights organizations and activists, toured a number of areas in Palestine that are particularly relevant to human rights, and attended classes on the human rights situation in Palestine and the violations of international laws. All of the visits we did in the Human Rights Volunteer Program were incredibly interesting and informative, and they included a wide range of topics, like women’s and children’s rights. When I was not on visits for the program, I studied Arabic at the Excellence Center. My first few weeks of Arabic lessons were not the best, but the teaching staff at the Excellence Center made sure that I eventually found the right person to teach me. I did not learn as much Arabic as I would have liked to, but if I had been taught by my final teacher, Anas, the whole time I was at the Center, I know I would have learned so much more. Anas is truly an amazing Arabic teacher.

The staff at the Excellence Center are amazing; everyone that works here is incredibly kind and generous with their time and efforts. I also really enjoyed meeting and speaking with other international volunteers. Learning about the differences in perspectives and education in our respective countries was so interesting, especially when comparing what we knew coming into the program to what we have all learned during our time here in Palestine. Overall the Excellence Center has a nice, welcoming environment; it makes you want to stay longer.

When I was not at the Excellence Center, I was enjoying my time with my host family in Hebron. I have had an amazing experience with my host family. My host family has been so kind and welcoming to me, and I know that if I come back to Hebron I have a place to stay with them. I have visited relatives with them, had family dinners almost every night, and attended engagement celebrations and weddings with them. I love my family here in Hebron, and they represent the city so well. Everyone I have met in Hebron has been wonderful. I have stayed here for a month and I have heard “welcome to Hebron” while walking in the street at least once a day.

One of my favorite things to do while in Hebron is going to cafes with the volunteers at the center and with some local young people too. Occasionally we have stayed out well after dark, but I have not felt unsafe ever. Walking at night in public as a woman is something I would never do in the US, but I feel completely safe doing so in Hebron because everyone I meet is willing to help if I need it. Overall my favorite thing about Palestine in the people and the hospitality; you really have to experience it to understand. After being in Hebron for a few days I knew I would be back. I feel even more strongly about coming back to Hebron after a month of being here. I would absolutely recommend going to the Excellence Center in Hebron. It is an experience that I will cherish forever.

The Excellence Center's Summer Internship in Palestine is an incredible program for students, volunteers, teachers, or travelers to have the opportunity to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict first hand. Moreover, the Center provides in depth Arabic instruction at your level. No matter if you are a beginner or almost to fluency, these teachers know how to teach you. I have experienced events and places I could not have imagined. I have interviewed and met with people hosting indescribable experiences. From refugee camps to the governor's office, I have notes upon notes filled in my notebook with valuable information. I will never forget meeting with a Palestinian woman who's husband was murdered by the IDF. Her testimony was one that gave me the chills and truly opened my eyes to what is truly happening on the ground here --- something unseen in western media.

The Palestinian people are what I will truly miss the most. Their hospitality and respect is incomparable. I was invited to multiple homes where I met amazing friends and have established my place in families all over Palestine. I have more brothers and sisters here than I ever will have in the United States.

This place is completely safe and I feel more safe in Palestine than I do in the streets of the United States. The people here look out for one another and protect their own. Living, learning, teaching, eating, and enjoying life with Palestinians make you apart of their family, and with that, you will be safe at all times.

This has been my greatest choice and experience. The Center is so flexible and catered to my every need. I am using this for university credit and university research and they set up the proper interviews, trips, and opportunities to research as much as I needed.

I will truly miss this place and these people. Inshallah I will come back.