Sama' Abdulhadi's short RA documentary, Portrait of Sama' Abdulhadi, will premiere online January 31st. A bigger project is also in the works: RA has partnered with LA-based production company Muddy Water to produce a feature-length documentary about Abdulhadi. It's set to come out at the beginning of 2024.

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It was 2009 in Ramallah, Palestine. As keffiyeh-clad crowds bounced to a tapestry of raw dystopian beats, Sama' Abdulhadi looked up from the decks and smiled at the people on the dance floor. A large crowd of Palestinians with mohawks, dreadlocks and tattoos had walked into the party from the Israeli city of Haifa, a cultural capital for Palestinians who know it as occupied Palestine.

"This was the day Ramallah met Haifa," Abdulhadi told me on a cloudy autumn day at an East London cafe. "We didn't know about each other in the party context, so it was this really amazing union. Just incredible."

Organised by Abdulhadi's close friend, the photographer Fidaa Kiwan, that first party set the tempo for others. Some took place in outdoor spaces, attracting up to a thousand people. "People partied like no tomorrow because no one knew when the police would shut us down," Abdulhadi said.

Abdulhadi found techno the year before, discovering Satoshi Tomiie and James Zabiela in Beirut where she was trying to work out her next move in life. She took techno home to Palestine, but it was Kiwan who made those first parties happen.

"She brought the bands, the rappers, the DJs and would fight the police to make it work," said Abdulhadi. "She's the mama of the scene. God, I've known that woman since I was 18. She's probably the reason I played in Palestine—the reason [why] I continued the hobby that took me ten years to reach Europe."

A lot has happened since those powerful moments in Ramallah, culminating in Abdulhadi's 2018 Boiler Room set, which broke the internet with ten million views and caught the attention of Richie Hawtin’s manager, Ben Turner. "That's when my dad said, 'Okay, you're doing something good for the country; you're putting Palestine on a different map,'" said Abdulhadi.

This month's four-week Phonox residency follows a December tour that saw Abdulhadi hop through Miami, Quito, Medellin, Sydney, Brisbane, Beirut, Dublin, Madrid, Goa, Athens and Belgrade—five continents in the space of a month, for the first time ever. During a two-week break, she finished producing the second track of an EP scheduled for release in spring. She told me all this over Zoom from Miami, our second conversation after meeting in London.

The following day, she flew to Sydney. Wherever she goes, she's gifted keffiyeh scarves and Palestinian flags to sign before stepping on stage. "I was given a keffiyeh in Medellín yesterday," she said. "And I love the fact it's from the Palestinian city of Hebron," she said.

Days earlier, in Quito, someone gave her an Ecuador football shirt with a flag of Palestine on the back. On her couch in Paris, where she's based, there are Argentinian and Palestinian flags sewn together. "People in Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Arab world feel the pain when I talk about Palestine," she told me.

But when Abdulhadi first began touring, she realised Palestine wasn't on the map at all for some people. "One guy thought it was a verb," she said. Some artists were curious in other ways: "They'd be like, 'come sit! I want to ask a billion questions! Why does it bother you if I DJ in Israel?' It bothers me because they're playing for my coloniser. Israeli citizens can go anywhere to watch that DJ because they are considered to be European, but I was never able to get a Schengen visa before I started working as an artist because I'm Arab and Palestinian. Would anyone go see them play if they got booked for Russia? I doubt it."

Abdulhadi said this boycott of Russia in support of two million displaced Ukrainians is revealing of western double standards rejecting the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which advocates a cultural boycott of Israel in support of 5.8 million displaced Palestinian refugees. "None of us live in the city of our origin, and most of us cannot. Everyone believes in BDS when it comes to Russia, but still nothing for Palestinians who asked this for years," she said.

Abdulhadi was only ten during the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israel's forced five-year curfew on the West Bank and Gaza. By the time she was 13, Israeli soldiers took over the building where she lived with her family in Ramallah. Abdulhadi and her family had moved back from Jordan in 1994 after getting expelled from Palestine with 300,000 Palestinians during the 1967 Israel-Palestine war.

In May 2021, Abdulhadi joined Ramallah protests against the annexation of Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighbourhood in Jerusalem. "We were getting shot at and gas bombed for protesting everyday," she said. "I saw maybe five people get killed that week."

2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the Nakba—the forced 1948 displacement of 750,000 Palestinians—known in English as "the catastrophe." Abdulhadi explained that everyday is Nakba in Palestine and 2022, in particular, has been the deadliest since the second intifada. "We're still being massacred and displaced, they're still stealing more and more land and water, we're still under occupation," she said.

But for Abdulhadi, sometimes the best form of resistance is simply saying no. She turned down a lucrative deal from Puma because the brand sponsors Israeli football teams living on illegal settlements. She's also refused offers from Berlin club ://about blank after it censored artists supporting the DJs for Palestine and BDS movements.

Meanwhile, the perpetual reality of occupation continues to embolden Abdulhadi's resolve to not play Israel—she has refused several requests from Tel Aviv club The Block. West Bank closures already restrict Palestinian freedom of movement and there are new plans from the Israel government to annex this region. "[They] actually wanted to put Palestinian flags all over the club," she said. "But it still means my family can't come, my friends can't come. It still doesn't remove the colonisation [of Palestine]."

Having such conversations with unarmed Israelis in harem pants on the dance floor is not exactly what Abdulhadi had in mind when she was booked to play Portugal's Boom Festival. Known for attracting steampunk travellers with a penchant for psytrance, the eco-driven global gathering sits on a huge lake.

"It was kinda weird because I didn't know that the festival was full of Israelis and I've never seen so many Israelis without uniforms and guns," she said. "After my set I discovered that and they told me, 'Come play with us, we'll promote peace.' But peace is when you let the people of Gaza walk freely, when we can go live in the villages we were kicked out from, when we are equal citizens and have the same rights. Until that day comes, we will not see peace sadly."