Darwish Died, Palestine Did Not

Writer: Laila El Refaie

“O you with bloodshot eyes and bloody palms!

Night is short-lived.

The detention room last not forever,

Nor yet the links of chains!

Nero died, Rome did not:

With her very eyes she fights!

And seeds from a withered ear

With wheat shall fill the valley.”

—Mahmoud Darwish (On Man)

!يا دامي العينين والكفين"

.إن الليل زائل

لا غرفة التوقيف باقية

!ولا زرد السلسل

:نيرون مات, ولم تمت روما

!بعينيها تقاتل

و حبوب سنبلة تجف

"إستملأ الوادي سنابل

(محمود درويش (عن إنسان -

Artistic expression is intimately connected to resistance. While strikes, uprisings, and revolutions are characterised by their collectivist nature, there is nevertheless an individualism to them. Each person opts to riot for their own reasons, even if they are extensions of the overall demands of the group. In the Egyptian revolution of 2011, the triad of demands was simple: Bread, Freedom, and Social Justice. For each person, these demands stemmed from their individual experience, and for that very reason, the graffiti of the revolution was distinct from one artist to the next. What becomes an infinitely more intriguing phenomenon, however, is the immortalisation of the artist and their revolutionary movement through their art. This is precisely what the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist occupation has done for over a century. We see this in the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, which inspired numerous Palestinians to express their dissent against the occupation in written, visual, and musical forms. While the IDF may continue to murder countless Palestinians, it cannot completely kill them if they remain immortalised in their art. If it is destroyed, so, too, is the legacy of the artist, and so they face a second death.

Palestinian artists have been known to experiment with numerous forms of art. Author Ghassan Kanafani wrote numerous novels depicting and lamenting the state of Palestine following the nakba, including Men in the Sun (1962) and Return to Haifa (1970). From 1975 to 1987, cartoonist Naji Al-Ali presented his series of cartoons starring Handala, a ten year old boy who would star in cartoons lamenting the Palestinian state of affairs and mocking the Israeli leadership. Handala became almost synonymous with Naji Al-Ali, depicted in some cartoons as throwing rocks and tearing down the Israeli flag. Here, there is a clear message: the Palestinians will no longer be seen as victims, but rather as resistors of the occupation. Lastly, in the 1960s and 1970s, poet and author Mahmoud Darwish became one of the most prominent symbols of the Palestinian revolution.

His poetry led to his exile and imprisonment on numerous occasions, whereby he took every opportunity he had to criticise the Zionist occupation. The poetry of Mahmoud Darwish is characterised by numerous aspects, but it is most accurately described by poet Naomi Shihab Nye, who described it as “lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant—and never anything less than free—what he would dream for all his people.”

Each of the aforementioned artists was either imprisoned or assassinated by the Israeli government. Mahmoud Darwish lived his life in perpetual exile; both Naji Al-Ali and Ghassan Kanafani were assassinated by the Mossad. There has been a clear trajectory in the actions of the IDF to not only kill the Palestinian people, but to also destroy their art. Over the years, the Israeli government has officially censored numerous books, journals, and artists in the occupied territories to prevent the circulation of Palestinian art and discourse. The speed at which a graffiti painting could be produced also made it a medium of choice for many Palestinians, but the area of focus here is not on the graffiti itself, but on the fact that at night, the IDF would paint over and black out as many images and words as they could. Some paintings lasted one day, some could only survive a moment. As recently as 2018, a Palestinian Art Centre in Gaza was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike under the claim that it had been used as a base for Hamas. In spite of the ongoing erasure, Palestinians continue to produce their art. They become a nuisance to the IDF; pests it simply cannot shake off. While the IDF seeks to massacre Palestinians across the occupied lands, it cannot erase the memory of art, and it certainly cannot remove it from the internet. From a Zionist perspective, the state of Israel must maintain its legitimacy at any cost. This legitimacy cannot be complete if the art forms and discourses delegitimising it continue to survive. What is ironic, however, is the impossibility of attaining such a goal. Palestinian art is now ingrained in the memories of countless people, both online and offline; it is saved on thousands of clouds and social media websites. How, then, can the occupation erase what is much larger than its bulldozers?

Perhaps the most iconic image in Palestinian paintings continues to be that of Muhammad Al-Durrah; the child who cowered in his father’s arms as he attempted to hide from the Israeli line of fire. Each year, on the 30th of September, new paintings and art pieces commemorating the second intifada depict this tragic incident. But why must the most widely recognisable image of the Palestinian struggle be that of a murdered child? Some Palestinians seek to challenge the international discourse surrounding Palestine as a site of ongoing murder and terror, through producing art that portrays Palestinians as modernised, surviving, and sometimes even “hipsters.” And that is completely understandable. In perpetually hearing about atrocities happening in a country that is sufficiently far away from us that we do not directly witness them, we begin to grow desensitised to any new information. What difference does one more dead Palestinian make, when thousands have been murdered already? In reminding the world that the people who are being murdered are, in fact, very much like them, the Palestinian artist succeeds in making the additional murder seem significantly more tragic. To put it in economic terms, the marginal pain of an additional death is restored to its original level. We see this quite clearly in popular Instagram account and photo journal @HiddenPalestine, which depicts Palestinian landscapes and scenery along with short entires on the history of the depicted location. However, one image stands out. Reposted from photographer Fatma Shbair, an image depicting a young boy and girl smiling bashfully at one another. Their childish affection is pleasing to the eye, but it is juxtaposed against their dirty, bare feet, and the grey, ruined doorway upon which they sit. Here, the true equilibrium is reached; the Palestinian child is shown in life, rather than in death, and thus the fact that they are at risk of dying—or losing each other—to the actions of the IDF is far more harrowing.

To challenge the erasure of Palestinian art, it is important to understand how it occurs. The occupation establishes its control; the oppressed create revolutionary art in defiance; the occupation seeks to erase that art, and nearly always fails to eradicate it completely; the revolution is immortalised. We can see this process everywhere, but the survival of the Palestinian cause for over a century despite the combined efforts of Israel and all its allies is a fascinating phenomenon. It acts as proof that while the Zionist occupation may co-opt Palestinian cuisine, it is much more difficult to take credit for the very art that goes against it. That said, while art may maintain the memory of Palestine, it is nevertheless important to remember that art can never resurrect the dead. While it may keep their memory and legacy alive, their corpses still continue to rot in the soil. Only in fighting for the rights of Palestinians to not only survive, but to thrive, can we seek to find hope for the Palestinian cause.

Sources:

https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/solidarity-and-what-it-means-in-palestine-s-art-scene-1.780482

https://www.haaretz.com/1.5088819

https://www.jstor.org/stable/656446?seq=9#metadata_info_tab_contents

https://frieze.com/article/palestinian-arts-centre-razed-israeli-air-strikes-gazastrip

https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/art-under-occupation-the-challenges-facing-palestinian-artists-and-cultural-institutions-1.723211

https://insidearabia.com/naji-al-ali-palestinian-arab-cartoonist/

https://idsb.tmgrup.com.tr/2016/01/06/645x344/1452034035015.jpg

http://www.handala.org/cartoons/cartoon-gallery/israel/index.html