"Liberation - Catharsis" by Palestinian artist Najat El-Khairy. The artwork is part of a series that explores themes of purification and liberation from occupation, reflecting on the artist's personal journey and the Palestinian experience.
Symbolism and Meaning
The woman in the artwork represents the "Palestinian Fellaha" or village woman, and also the olive tree, which is a symbol of resilience, resistance, and determination. She is depicted with tree roots for legs, deeply entrenched in her land, proudly holding her history, culture, and heritage.
Her face is intentionally omitted to represent all Palestinian women.
The embroidery on the woman's dress and in the background is a central element.
Najat El-Khairy is a collector and lecturer on Palestinian embroidery and uses her art to preserve this cultural legacy. The patterns often include motifs with specific meanings, such as "The Walls of Jerusalem" and "the Star of Bethlehem," and are used to assert the identity of the land.
The olive grove and doves are prominent features in the artwork. The olive grove with its trees represents peace, while the two doves in the sky symbolize freedom and the right of return.
The "forbidden colors" (red, green, white, and black) of the Palestinian flag, which the occupiers banned in artwork from 1980 to 1993, are freely used in this piece to assert Palestinian identity.
Najat El-Khairy's art, including "Liberation - Catharsis," is her way of documenting and preserving Palestinian cultural heritage on a lasting surface, such as porcelain, to prevent it from being forgotten or appropriated.
The artist was born in 1948, the year of the Nakba, which she sees as a driving force for her mission to keep Palestinian culture alive.
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Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Palestine (photo 1945) Image source: Library of Congress This
image of a Palestinian woman in her Malaka thobe, standing above the
Church of the Nativity, is familiar to many Palestinians. When I see
these pre-Nakba images I always think about the people in them. Who was
she? What was her name, her story? I wonder how she lived through the
Nakba just a few years later, how she carried the weight of memory and
loss. Did she get to stay in Palestine, or was she displaced like so
many of us?
This piece by Egyptian artist Dai Abbas evokes symbols of solidarity
with Palestine, featuring a watermelon held up by a community of people.Dai Abbas
The keffiyeh explained: How this scarf became a Palestinian national symbol
By Zoe Sottile, CNN
Palestinians seen at a polling station in the West Bank town of Hebron in 2006.
Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images
2023 Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, three Palestinian college students were shot in Vermont, two of them while wearing keffiyehs, in a crime their families have said was “fueled by hate.”
Although keffiyehs are worn across the Middle East, in
recent decades they have come to be identified in particular as a symbol
of Palestinian identity and resistance. At pro-Palestinian protests
across the world amid the Israel-Hamas war, demonstrators have sported
the scarves around their necks or used them to cover their faces.
Palestinians pick olives during a ceremony marking the start of the
olive harvesting season last year in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza
Strip [File: Said Khatib/AFP]
‘Our hearts burn’: Gaza’s olive farmers say Israel war destroys harvest
Since the start of the Israeli offensive on October 7, farmers have been unable to access their farmland and crops.
The mother of two has worked as a farmer with her parents since her
childhood in the town of Abasan al-Kabira in southern Gaza, close to the
border with Israel. “My land has olive trees and greenhouses planted
with tomatoes and livestock,” she says.
She can no longer tend to those trees or tomatoes: The 40-year-old
was displaced with her family and is living in a United Nations-run
school in the centre of Khan Younis due to near-continuous Israeli
bombing since October 7.
“I have no idea what state they are in. I just want to reach my land to see what has become of it,” she says.
It’s a sentiment echoed by farmers across Gaza.
The months of October and November, when olives are harvested,
hold special significance for Palestinians, who consider the harvest a
national occasion that celebrates their relationship and connection with
the land.
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The olive tree has deep historical and cultural roots in Palestine, and
its branches have been associated with peace and prosperity for
centuries.
The art of Palestinian embroidery, or tatreez, is a decorative needle
and thread practice passed down through generations of Palestinian
women.
The art of embroidery in Palestine, practices, skills, knowledge and rituals
Inscribed in 2021 (16.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
The art of traditional embroidery is widespread in
Palestine. Originally made and worn in rural areas, the practice is now
common in all of Palestine and among members of the diaspora. Women’s
village clothing usually consists of a long dress, trousers, a jacket, a
headdress and a veil. Each of these garments is embroidered with a
variety of symbols including birds, trees and flowers. The choice of
colours and designs indicates the woman’s regional identity and marital
and economic status. On the main garment, the loose-fitting dress called
a thob, the chest, sleeves and cuffs are covered with embroidery.
Embroidered, vertical panels run down the dress from the waist. The
embroidery is sewn with silk thread on wool, linen or cotton. Embroidery
is a social and intergenerational practice, as women gather in each
other’s homes to practise embroidery and sewing, often with their
daughters. Many women embroider as a hobby, and some produce and sell
embroidered pieces to supplement their family’s income, either on their
own or in collaboration with other women. These groups gather in each
other’s homes or in community centres, where they may also market their
work. The practice is transmitted from mother to daughter and through
formal training courses.
The Tatreez Institute (TI), also known as Tatreez & Tea, was founded by Wafa Ghnaim in 2016 to preserve, document, and research Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Jordanian embroidery, dress, and history in the United States.
Committed to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and preventing cultural erasure, the TI stewards a growing collection of over 180 traditional dresses and headdresses, rescued from dumpsters, estates, households, and vintage shops worldwide.
Flag of Palestine, with a watermelon replacing the red triangleThis Palestine Watermelon flag evokes the spirit of joyful resistance
and steadfastness in the face of Israeli efforts to deny, thwart and
criminalize the national and political aspirations of the Palestinian
people. Fhartha
The flag of Palestine, colored in the Pan-Arab colors of red, green, white and black, had been banned in Israel in certain situations, leading to the locally-grown and similarly-colored watermelon taking its place in Palestinian
iconography as an alternative for decades. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel banned the display of the Palestinian flag and its colors in the occupied Gaza Strip and the Wast Bank with the Israeli Army arresting anyone who displayed it.
In 1980, the IDF shut down an art gallery in Ramallah.
According to the exhibit organizer the IDF explained that the rules
forbade Palestinians from displaying red, green, black and white, and
watermelon is an example of art that violated the Israeli army's rules.... READ MORE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermelon_as_a_Palestinian_symbol
NPR: How watermelon imagery, a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians, spread around the world
Demonstrators shout slogans and hold up an image of
Handala, a symbol of Palestinian struggle, on Jan. 27 during a protest
in Madrid in support of Palestinians and to demand a cease-fire in the
Israel-Hamas war. Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
Who is Handala, the barefoot, spiky-haired boy who symbolizes Palestinian resistance?
RAMALLAH, West Bank — His hair is like a hedgehog, his feet are bare,
his clothes are rags and his back is to the world always. His name is
Handala.
A character created by Palestinian newspaper cartoonist Naji al-Ali in 1969 — two years after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — the boy known as Handala is a symbol of the Palestinian struggle and resistance to occupation to this day.
Who is Handala?
Handala is forever 10 years
old — the age that Ali was when his family was forced to move during the
mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948 when the state of Israel was
formed. Palestinians and their supporters refer to that displacement as
the Nakba, or Arabic for "catastrophe."
Ali's refugee boy character shares his name with a resilient, bitter plant that grows in the Middle East called handal. It has deep roots and will always grow back even if it's weeded out.
"This character represents insurgency, refusal and struggle," says Egyptian columnist Nadi Hafez of al-Qabas newspaper,
where Ali worked for a long time. "And it satirizes the politics around
the Palestinian cause, or the politics of the Arab world, or indeed
international politics when it comes to the Palestinian cause."
Handala didn't turn his back to the reader until 1973, after the Yom
Kippur War, when a coalition of Arab countries led by Egypt and Syria
fought Israel in October of that year. At the time, there was a push by
countries including the U.S. for a settlement of the conflict. By
turning Handala's back to the world, Ali was expressing his rejection of
solutions from foreign nations imposed on Palestinians.... READ MORE https://www.npr.org/2024/02/06/1228097975/handala-naji-al-ali-cartoon-palestinian-symbol
Key- Universal Declaration of Human Rights & every refugee's inalienable right of return to original homes & lands
Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish was born in al-Birwa in Galilee, a
village that was occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Because
they had missed the official Israeli census, Darwish and his family were
considered “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens.” Darwish
lived for many years in exile in Beirut and Paris. He is the author of
over 30 books of poetry and eight books of prose, and earned the Lannan
Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation, the Lenin Peace
Prize, and the Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres Medal from France.
In the 1960s Darwish was imprisoned for reciting poetry and traveling
between villages without a permit. Considered a “resistance poet,” he
was placed under house arrest when his poem “Identity Card” was turned
into a protest song. After spending a year at a university of Moscow in
1970, Darwish worked at the newspaper Al-Ahram in Cairo. He subsequently lived in Beirut, where he edited the journal Palestinian Affairs from 1973 to 1982. In 1981 he founded and edited the journal Al-Karmel.
Darwish served from 1987 to 1993 on the executive committee of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization. In 1996 he was permitted to return
from exile to visit friends and family in Israel and Palestine.
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye commented on the poems in Unfortunately It Was Paradise:
“[T]he style here is quintessential Darwish—lyrical, imagistic,
plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant—and never anything
less than free—what he would dream for all his people.”
Mahmoud Darwish died in 2008 in Houston, Texas.
The Land and Love by Palestinian Ismail Shammout 1931-2006
Spring in Palestine by Ismail Shammout 1931-2006
Ismail Shammout was born in 1930 in Lydda –
Palestine. During the Nakba of 1948, he and his family were forced out
of their home during the assault of Jewish Zionist militant groups on
their town. A long march on foot allowed them to settle in the refugee
camps of Khan Younis in Gaza where he lived under very harsh conditions.
In 1950 he managed to travel to Cairo to study arts from where he later
earned a scholarship to study fine arts at the Accademia di Belle Arti
in Rome. After he finished his studies, he moved to Beirut in 1959 where
he married his fellow arts student from Cairo, the Palestinian artist
Tamim El-Akhal (born 1935). Both lived and worked in Beirut until 1983
then moved to Kuwait, then to Germany and finally to Amman in 1994.
Shammout died on July 3 rd 2006.
Shammout, who himself experienced expulsion and
refuge and accompanied later the birth of the Palestinian Revolution in
the 1960s, became since the very early days of his professional live
along with his partner Tamam El-Akhal the “artistic face” of the
Palestinian Freedom Struggle. He has been long recognized as Palestine’s
leading modernist painter. His experience of dispossession and the
memories of beloved Palestine, the dreams of return as well as the
dignity and pride of his people formed the soul of his entire art. The
simplicity of the themes and his outstanding artistic skills let his
works enjoy a widely spread popularity which significantly shaped modern
Palestinian Art. https://ismail-shammout.com/
Sliman Mansour is one of the most distinguished and renowned artists
in Palestine. His style embodies steadfastness in the face of a
relentless military occupation. His work — which has come to symbolize
the Palestinian national identity — has inspired generations of
Palestinians and international artists and activists alike.
Born
in 1947, Mansour spent his childhood around the verdant hills and fields
of Birzeit — where he was born — and later his adolescence in Bethlehem
and Jerusalem. These experiences left a significant mark on his work,
heightening a sense of gradual loss in Palestine, especially after the
occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem in 1967. His early experiences
also presented him with the symbols and images he would later use to
preserve and highlight Palestinian identity.
Using symbols derived
from Palestinian life, culture, history, and tradition, Mansour
uniquely illustrates Palestinians’ resolve and connection with their
land. His pieces epitomize art as a form of resistance. With orange
trees, he represents land lost in the Nakba of 1948. With olive trees,
he represents land occupied in 1967. With women wearing traditional
embroidered dresses, he represents Palestinian land and the Palestinian
revolution. With the landscape of Palestine and its stone terraces, he
represents the mark of Palestinian farmers on the land. With images of
Jerusalem and the glistening Dome of the Rock, he represents the
Palestinian homeland and the dream of return.
Sliman Mansour’s art
deftly reflects the hopes and realities of a people living under
occupation for the better part of a century. Since the early 1970s, he
has translated his experiences of isolation, displacement, community,
and rootedness using imagery and symbols that have contributed to
developing an iconography of the Palestinian struggle. Paintings such as
“Jamal al-Mahamel” (Camel of Hardships or Camel of Burdens) — with its
iconic porter whose heavy and precious load is the Jerusalem that all
Palestinians yearn for — were made into posters, cards, and stickers.
Such images were popularized in direct defiance of Israeli military
authorities, who frequently confiscated artwork and posters and closed
exhibitions and galleries. https://slimanmansour.com/about-the-artist-sliman-mansour/
An architectural marvel and a sacred Islamic site, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem signifies the religious and historical continuity of the
Palestinian identity in the face of shifting global landscapes.
Palestinian cuisineis rich and diverse, featuring dishes like musakhan, maqluba, falafel, hummus, and tabouli, all reflecting a blend of local ingredients, regional traditions, and cultural influences.
Olive oil, herbs, and spices like sumac and za'atar are staples in Palestinian cooking
The key is a poignant symbol of the right of return for Palestinian
refugees. It represents the homes left behind during the Nakba, and the
enduring hope of return to their ancestral homes and villages.
Families newly displaced by the escalation in northern Gaza, including Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, are facing dire conditions.
With limited food and water, some of them now live in makeshift tents on the main street near the UNRWA Gaza main compound.
#CeasefireNow
UNRWA USA lifts up the voices, experiences, and humanity of Palestine refugees to secure American support for resources essential to every human being, for the promise of a better life.
voices of unrwa blog
We aim to shed light on the daily realities faced on the ground by Palestine refugees and the impact of our work in providing humanitarian relief and support. Here, you will find insightful articles from our staff, partners, and beneficiaries about UNRWA’s education, health, and emergency assistance programs. Join us as we share inspiring stories of resilience, hope, and determination from Palestine and beyond. https://www.unrwausa.org/voices-of-unrwa
Gaza, My True Home: A Palestine refugee’s story of hope and return
Amjad Shabat, a former freelance content producer for UNRWA USA, reported from Gaza before she was evacuated in 2024. Now residing in Texas with her husband and young daughter, she contributes as a guest writer for the Voices of UNRWA blog. Through her writing, she reflects on her identity as a refugee and her longing to return home.
The phrase “no place like home” has echoed a lot in my family. I remember my late father saying it the moment he stepped through the door after a long day at work. To keep the tradition, I hung the tapestry at the entrance of my apartment. This simple phrase is deeply rooted in my consciousness now. No matter where I live, if I’m away from Palestine, I can't feel home.
As refugees, our perspective of home is complicated. We move around while remembering our homes are temporary, until we return back to our rightful, ancestral land. And yet, despite its challenges, life as a refugee has taught me resilience and profoundly shaped my identity.
Growing up in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, I remember the winters were the most difficult. Our metal-ceiling houses and narrow streets used to sink and float each time it rained. We never had a playground to play in. Our most joyful games took place in the alleys. Gaza has been under an illegal blockade since 2007, and at one point early on in the siege, our resources were so limited that we could not even get paper or pencils to write down our lessons.
I went to UNRWA schools where classes were crowded. This pushed me to work hard so I could stand out. My passion for writing emerged, and with the encouragement of my UNRWA teachers, I joined storytelling competitions across elementary schools in Jabalia. I felt proud of myself as I heard my classmates’ applause after winning first and second place. Their little hands clapping is a memory I cherish as the true sound and image of success.
Appreciating the value of education is a core concept in our lives as Palestinians and as refugees. My parents always told me that education would lead us toward a better future—a lesson I now strive to pass on to my own young daughter. Through education, our generation is able to tell our narrative in different languages, playing a major role in the growing global solidarity movement for Palestine.
I learned other lessons watching my people find creative solutions to life under siege. I admired the countless female nurses and doctors who treated injuries with scared and shaky hands under fire. In devastating conditions, UNRWA workers continued their efforts to deliver life-saving aid while trying to survive themselves. They arrived at our makeshift tents and camps under the continuous massive bombings to deliver the only food available. My daughter, who was two and a half years old at the time, would have an egg every three days delivered by UNRWA. During these days, this single egg was her only source of protein.
What also left a strong impression on me were the female journalists and UNRWA humanitarian workers—women who, while carrying the weight of their roles as mothers surviving a military assault— prepare and pack their children's meals before heading out to document what experts know to be a genocide or deliver life-saving UNRWA aid. They balanced motherhood with the immense responsibility of helping others, all while trying to survive the same brutal conditions and stay strong for their children.... READ MORE https://www.unrwausa.org/voices-of-unrwa/gaza-my-true-home
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