A ‘Musical Intifada’ in the West Bank

Criss-Crossing a Traumatized Land With Young, Palestinian Musicians

Over the last five years, as I criss-crossed the West Bank to document one young musician’s dream to build music schools amidst Israel’s military occupation, I’d often come upon a stark tableau that never failed to shock: charred or razed olive groves, among the estimated 800,000 Palestinian olive trees uprooted by Israeli bulldozers or torched by West Bank settlers since 1967, often in the name of “security.”

“It’s normal,” said 13-year-old Alá. She stared out of her bus window toward the field of stumps, and the towering gray separation wall …