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We are excited to present the recipients of the 2024 Humanity in Action October ’43 Travel Grants: Maya Zoe Saadon, Zelma Feldman Lewerissa and Anders Redder.
We look forward to seeing their projects and fascinating trips unfold!
Love in Conflict: Contested Intimacy and Identity Among Palestinian-Israeli Couples in Berlin
By Zelma Feldman Lewerissa and Maya Zoe Saadon

The October ’43 Travel Grant from Humanity in Action will enable Maya Zoe Saadon and Zelma Feldman Lewerissa to realize their anthropological fieldwork on Israeli-Palestinian couples living in Berlin. Together with their previous research in Israel and Palestine, the fieldwork in Berlin will form the empirical material for their book “Love in Conflict: Contested Intimacy and Identity among Palestinian-Israeli Couples”, which will be in Danish and meant for a Danish audience.
A central theme for many mixed couples in Israel and Palestine is navigating the significant power differential that exists between the parties. While one party often enjoys privileges such as freedom of movement, the other party is part of a minority that is treated as a second-class citizen in many respects. During Maya and Zelma’s previous anthropological fieldwork, Berlin was often mentioned as a place the informants imagined their love would be considered more “normal” than it was in Israel and Palestine.
The upcoming fieldwork in Berlin will explore how the imaginations of Berlin compare to the lived realities.
The book will explore questions such as: Does the power relationship change with migration? Are the parties becoming more equal? How is the new common status of “newcomer” received in an increasingly right-wing Europe? Does it lead to new and different challenges? And, importantly, how has the aftermath of October 7, 2023 and the subsequent humanitarian crisis in Gaza affected Berlin as a “refuge”?
Have the challenges from the homeland followed the couples to Berlin?
The sometimes conflict-ridden, difficult and instructive work that the couples engage in, in relation to each other and in relation to their respective families, is valuable knowledge in the research on the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, and in the efforts to create a future where both populations can live in just peace and freedom.