[1] She grew up in the Dheisheh Palestinian refugee camp[2] near Bethlehem,[3] where she experienced and saw violent acts, and her own children were traumatized by a shooting incident in which her husband was shot in his car on an Israeli army checkpoint.

[4] She decided to work in education after her 9-year-old twins and her 6-year-old son were shot at by Israeli soldiers in October at the outset of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

She has said that when she started teaching, "the violence that kids were seeing in the streets, they were carrying into the classroom," but that after a few months, their behavior and attitude improved dramatically.

[12] Her husband, Omar, served 10 years in an Israeli prison after having been convicted as an accomplice in a deadly 1980 bullet and grenade attack in Hebron in which six Israelis died while walking home to Beit Hadassah, a building into which Jewish settlers had recently moved, from Friday night Sabbath prayers.

[15][16] On his release, Omar al-Hroub endorsed the 1993 Oslo interim peace accord with Israel and the Two-State Solution, and later served as a deputy Cabinet minister with the Palestinian Authority.