THE PALESTINIAN HISTORY TAPESTRY

منسوجة التاريخ الفلسطيني

“We have on this land that which makes this life worth living”. Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian National Poet.

Poetry is popular in all Arab societies.  Palestinian families sometimes compete in reciting classical poems, for example, by concluding a verse with a letter from which it is difficult for the next person to continue. Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “On this land those who deserve to live” is well known to Palestinians.

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The painted plaster head of a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B statue discovered at Jericho



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The Neolithic wall of Jericho dates from approximately 8000 BCE. If interpreted as an "urban fortification", it is the oldest city wall discovered by archaeologists anywhere in the world.
Source:
Kathleen Kenyon was a leading British archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She is best known for her excavations of Jericho between 1952 and 1958, and has been called one of the most influential archaeologists of the 20th century


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This female figure dates from the Chalcolithic Period in Palestine, the period of transition from prehistoric times to early civilization.

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The Chalcolithic ram was found in 1895 by farmers ploughing land near the village of Yazur, 6 kilometres east of Jaffa. It is carved from a flat, squarish piece of limestone. 

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A Western Asiatic electrum jug hammered from a single sheet of bronze. Syro-Palestine, early 2^nd millennium BCE.

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The temple mural (1892 BCE) at Beni Hasan, Middle Egypt, depicts Asiatic herdsmen with three children coming to trade with a local Egyptian ruler. They are recognisable by their dress, pulled back hair, and short pointed beards.

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The temple mural (1892 BCE) at Beni Hasan, Middle Egypt, depicts Asiatic herdsmen coming to trade with a local Egyptian ruler. They are recognisable by their dress, pulled back hair, and short pointed beards. In addition to the humans, the mural portrays gazelles, weapons, goods, and tools.

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A Philistine warrior, as depicted in the Luxor Temple in Egypt.



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Philistines appear in Assyrian sources in the 9th century BCE. Palestine was mentioned in early Greek sources as a place - ‘Palaestina’ - and as a people, ‘Palaistinoi’. Palestine as a geographic name appears in the 5th century BCE histories of Herodotus. Third century BCE Hellenistic sources referred to ‘Palaistin’ to describe the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt. This panel is based on a sketch drawn by Laila Tibi [Taybeh].

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Decorated Philistine pottery is known for some of the most beautiful motifs on early Iron Age decorated pottery. Stylistic representations of birds in the Mycenaean style were considered to be sacred. They are also featured on the Philistine ships in the reliefs in Ramesses III (20th Dynasty) mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, Thebes (modern Luxor), Egypt. They depict his battle with the Sea Peoples around 1175 BCE.

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This panel is based on the largest Philistine bird shard image known, from 12th/11th century BCE, which was found at Tel Miqne-Ekron.

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A set of Assyrian palace reliefs narrate the Assyrian victory over the kingdom of Judah.  Lachish was an important city in Judah, second only to Jerusalem.  In 701 BCE, the Assyrian army attacked the city from the south because of the steepness of the northern side, where the Jewish defenders situated themselves on the walls.

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Ba’al was a title and honorific meaning "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity.

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The first Jewish temple (Beit HaMikdash), was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II after the Siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE.  The embroidery is based on an image by an unnamed illustrator of Petrus Comestor's 'Bible Historiale', France, 1372.

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One of a pair of roosters, heads turned backwards, straddling a doorway



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Alexander III of Macedon (356-323 BCE), commonly known as Alexander the Great, created one of the largest empires in the ancient world. He conquered the Persians, who had earlier subjugated Palestine, but his conquest of Palestine was not violent. The land simply came into his hands with the rest of the Persian Empire.

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The Roman conquest of Judea in 63 BCE was solidified when Herod was appointed King of Judea.



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The birth of Jesus of Nazareth in Bethlehem. “And so it was… that Mary gave birth to a son in a stable. She called him Jesus and wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger of hay”.

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The aqueduct at Caesarea is on the coastal plain south of Haifa. The town and aqueduct were built by Herod the Great around 25–13 BCE, as the port city Caesarea Marittima. It served as an administrative centre for the province of Judea in the Roman Empire

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Helena was mother of Constantine the Great, who became Emperor of the Byzantine Empire.



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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is believed to have been built on the site at which Jesus of Nazareth is said to have been crucified and buried



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Islam was brought to the region of Palestine during the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century,



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The Haram Ash Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) contains the Al-Aqsa Mosque - the third holiest site in Islam – and the Dome of the Rock.  The latter was initially completed in 691 CE at the order of Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik. It was built on the site of the Roman temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which had in turn been built on the site of the Second Jewish Temple, destroyed during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

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Khirbet El-Mafjar is an Umayyad hunting lodge 3 km north of Jericho, built in 734 CE. It is known as Hisham's Palace because it was thought to have been built by the Umayyad Caliph Hisham bin Abdul Malek (724-743 CE).

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The mosaics at Khirbet El-Mafjar, built in 734 CE by the Umayyad Caliph Hisham bin Abdul Malek (724-743 CE), are fine examples of Umayyad period art. All of the mosaics are of very high quality. The most famous depicts the "tree of life", in the diwan of the bath complex.

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On 15 July 1099, the First Crusade reached Palestine and entered the port city of Acre,



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The First Crusade began in 1099 when Pope Urban II called for a military expedition to help the Byzantines take control of the Holy Land. This inaugurated a period of two centuries in which Christians and Muslims often fought one another.

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Salah ad Din Yusuf (Saladin) was a Kurd and the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria.  His forces defeated the Crusaders in 1187 CE at the Battle of Hittin, and went on to re-capture Jerusalem, which had been seized by the Crusaders from the Egyptians 88 years earlier.

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An armed Mamluk warrior copied from an early 14th century Mamluk brass basin from Egypt or Syria (now in the Louvre), Paris.

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This Makam (resting place) was dedicated to a shepherd (Ra'ai) named Hassan. The Jerusalem-Jericho road was one of the primary roads passing Nebi Musa, an ancient holy site. Mediterranean Arabs made pilgrimages to Mecca past this point, and many-domed buildings mark the end of the first day's march.

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Sultan al-Malik al-Ashraf Qaytbay, one of the greatest patrons of Mamluk architecture, founded the al-Ashrafiyya Qaytbay, described as the third jewel of the Haram al-Sharif, after the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem

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This panel has been copied from a 15th century fragment measuring 11"x 3-3/8”. Perhaps Mamluk embroidery influenced the patterns used today by Palestinians.

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Suleyman the Magnificent ruled the Ottoman Empire between 1520 and 1566,



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Damascus Gate (Bab al-Amud) is one of seven main gates in the walls of Jerusalem. Built by the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman between 1537 and 1541,



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Palestinian embroidery has a rich history going back at least 200 years.



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Before the development of modern modes of transport, camels (‘ships of the desert’) were used to transport people and goods to and from Palestine.

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Coffee was on the Palestinian table before breakfast, after lunch and during evening hours, and it still graces all social events

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Jaffa oranges were cultivated by Palestinian farmers from the mid-19^th century, and take their name from the port city of Jaffa. Mention of Jaffa oranges being exported to Europe first appears in British consular reports in the 1850s.

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The title of this image is from a poem by Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian writer who was assassinated in 1972 by Mossad, the Israeli secret service.



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Advancing from Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte tried to capture the key port of Acre between 18 March and 20 May 1799. His plans received a setback when his siege artillery was lost to the British Navy.

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Palestine had been part of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years, but had retained its distinctive regional identity as Palestine, with an indigenous Arab population and culture.

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In 1917, the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, stated in a letter to Lord Rothschild, a British Jew, that the British government viewed with favour the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people in Palestine”,

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After the Allied occupation of Jerusalem in 1917, and until the Treaty of Sevres had been signed, Ottoman territories came under Allied military control, commanded by General Edmund Allenby.

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Traditional patterns used in Palestinian embroidery are designs of geometric shapes, but also include designs which were most familiar to Palestinian women

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In 1922, the newly-formed League of Nations decided the fate of the former Ottoman Empire. It ratified British control of Palestine in the form of a ‘mandate’. This document required Britain to lead Palestine towards independence, and create a ”national home” for Jews, and incorporated the wording of the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

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The 1st Viscount Herbert Samuel, who was Jewish and a Zionist, was appointed to the position of High Commissioner of Palestine in 1920

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The Palestine postage stamp had English, Arabic and Hebrew text.  Hebrew was given equal status to Arabic and English even though the Jewish  population was only around 10 per cent.

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An example of tahriri embroidery with traditional cross stitch.



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Palestinian wedding ceremonies start the night before the wedding day, when women from the bride’s family and her friends gather to sing, dance, and apply temporary tattoos with henna, a plant dye. Older women decorate the skin of the bride and her guests with designs that often take hours to complete.

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This panel displays a typical Palestinian country wedding with its rituals, dabkeh folk dance, the bride on a horse, and traditional music. The dabkeh dance is characteristic of the whole of the Levant, with the music and the dance steps differing slightly from place to place.

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‘Mawtini’ is a popular poem written by the Palestinian poet Ibrahim Tuqan. In the 1930s it was set to music composed by the Lebanese composer Mohammed Flayfel.

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The Arab Revolt in Palestine between 1936 and 1939 was a nationalist uprising against the British administration. It demanded Arab independence and an end of the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and land purchase. A general strike lasted from April to October 1936 and initiated a violent, peasant-led resistance movement in 1937.

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This panel shows the growth in the population of Palestine between 1918 and 1947, and the gradually increasing proportion of Jewish immigrants who were referred to as 'Jewish Palestinians' during the British Mandate.

Data sources:-



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Olives and olive oil symbolize Palestinian land, identity and culture. The olive tree is seen by many Palestinians as a symbol of nationality and connection to the land, particularly due to the slow growth and longevity of the tree.

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Safad is one of the oldest cities in historic Palestine, and has been home to adherents of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Archaeological excavations of the Crusader castle there uncovered remains of an Iron Age settlement. This panel was commissioned by the Sabbagh family.

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This image is familiar in three religions.

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Under the British Mandate, land purchases and Jewish migration had increased. In 1946, Jews owned 7 per cent of the land of Palestine.

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In 1947 the UN Partition Plan allocated the Jewish population in Palestine 55 per cent of the country,

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Palestinians refer to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine as the Nakba (Catastrophe), illustrated by these maps. One shows the hundreds of Palestinian villages before 1948, the other map shows  refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza in which expelled Palestinians were forced to live.  

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This embroidery is based on a painting by the distinguished Palestinian artist Ahmad Canaan. He was born in 1965 in Tamra, and now lives in Jerusalem.

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United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 [53]  on 11th December 1948,

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In the hope of returning to their homes, Palestinian refugees retain the keys to the houses from which they were forcefully displaced during the Nakba in 1948. The key symbolizes the inheritance of successive Palestinian generations of the right of return to their homes and their rejection of the policy of resettlement.

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Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails use hunger strikes to protest against prolonged administrative detention without trial.



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In March 1948, the Haganah and other Zionist militias began the forcible expulsion 250,000 Palestinians, destroying their communities.



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The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) was established in 1949.  The following year, it began providing nutritional, health, and educational services to about 750,000 Palestine refugees displaced as a result of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Today, UNRWA provides services to 5 million Palestinian refugees.

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The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established in 1964 and has been the embodiment of the Palestinian national movement. It is an umbrella organization comprised of numerous organizations of the resistance movement, political parties, popular organizations, and independent personalities and figures from all sectors of Palestinian life.

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During the 1967 war, Israel occupied what remained of Palestine. Hundreds of military checkpoints were established in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and in Gaza. These are used to entrench Israel’s occupation of all of historic Palestine. Movement of Palestinians is restricted within the occupied Palestinian territory, with dire consequences for access to education, health care, and the economy. 

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In his 2011 book Popular Resistance in Palestine, Mazin Qumsiyeh documents the many ways in which the indigenous people of Palestine have resisted  oppression - from the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, and the Zionist colonial project.

Non-violent resistance has been far more common and enduring than violent resistance. It has involved petitions, strikes, demonstrations, civil disobedience, non-cooperation, boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Many Palestinian towns and villages have organised resistance initiatives, but the media have ignored most of these. This panel includes the names of some that have been reported.

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Despite the suffering endured by Palestinians since the occupation of their homeland, steadfastness and hope for justice survive.



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Land Day, March 30, is an annual day of commemoration. In 1976, in response to the Israeli government's announcement of a plan to expropriate thousands of dunams of land for state purposes, a general strike and marches were organized in Arab towns, from the Galilee to the Negev. In the ensuing confrontations with the Israeli army and police, six unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed, about one hundred were wounded, and hundreds of others arrested.

This was the first time since 1948 that Palestinian Arabs in Israel had organized a response to Israeli policies as a Palestinian national collective. Land Day is marked not only by Palestinian citizens of Israel, but also by Palestinians all over the world.

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On 16 September 1982, right-wing Lebanese militiamen allied to Israel perpetrated the massacre of an estimated 2,000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in South Beirut.

Those murdered were mostly women, children and elderly, and many of the victims’ bodies were found mutilated and raped. Soon after the killing began, Israeli forces surrounded Sabra and Shatila and provided bulldozers that were used to dispose of the bodies of the victims’ .



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This panel shows school children being taught at home in Gaza after the Israeli occupation forces had cut electricity supplies and closed schools in response to the first Palestinian Intifada [uprising].

The Intifada, which began in 1987, was a protest against Israeli "beatings, shootings, killings, house demolitions, uprooting of trees, deportations, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial".

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The Mediterranean Sea has, for centuries, yielded its fruits to Gaza fishermen, and fish has been a mainstay of the Gazan diet. Israeli gunships hinder Palestinians fishing off the Gaza coast.

This has severely affected both the work of the fishermen and food security for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Thirty thousand people are currently dependent on Gaza’s fishing industry. 

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The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Campaign is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.

Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call for restrictive measures against Israel urges compliance with international law.

BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world.  BDS challenges international inaction on behalf of Palestinian rights and against Israel's occupation.

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This panel features products of Gaza – oranges, dates, fish and earthenware pots – and the 12th century Sayed al-Hashim Mosque (Masjid as-Sayed Hashim). It is one of the largest and oldest mosques in Gaza, located in the ad-Darraj Quarter of the Old City, off al-Wehda Street.

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Israel has imposed movement restrictions on the Gaza Strip since the early 1990’s. Restrictions intensified in June 2007, following the election of Hamas in 206. Israel then imposed a land, sea and air blockade on Gaza, citing security concerns.

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“Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to the drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly,

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On 27 December 2008, Israel launched a 22-day military assault on Gaza, killing more than 1400 Palestinians and rendering homeless thousands who had left their homes before these were destroyed.

This new pattern of Palestinian suffering continues decades after the trauma of the Nakba in 1948.

The embroidery is based on a drawing by Peter Rhoades, an Oxford-based artist, and illustrates a women sitting on the pile of rubble that was once her home.

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On 27 December 2008, Israel launched a 22-day military assault on Gaza, killing more than 1400 Palestinians and rendering homeless thousands who had left their homes before these were destroyed.

This new pattern of Palestinian suffering continues decades after the trauma of the Nakba in 1948.

The embroidery is based on a drawing by Peter Rhoades, an Oxford-based artist, and illustrates a family looking for their belongings in the rubble of Shejayiya, a neighbourhood of Gaza city at the eastern border of Gaza with Israel.

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This panel draws attention to the cycle of destruction and reconstruction of many Bedouin villages, including Al-Arakeeb, Aum Al-Heran, and threatened  Khan Al-Ahmar in the Jordan Valley.

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During the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza, four boys - Ahed Atef Bakr, Zakaria Ahed Bakr, Mohamed Ramez Bakr, and Ismael Mohamed Bakr - playing on the Gaza beach were killed by fire from an Israeli gunboat.

Israeli artist Amir Schiby created an image of the boys to honour their tragically short lives. It depicts a lone soccer ball in the surf, with the shadows of children playing nearby. He wrote on Facebook that the image was created "as a tribute to all children living in war zones."

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This embroidered infographic displays data on all 6691 Palestinian and 228 Israeli deaths from Gaza-related hostilities between October 2000 and August 2016. The first column (black) displays deaths of Israeli military personnel and definite and possible Palestinian combatants. The other columns display deaths of civilians, from left to right adult men (deep gray), youths aged 10-17 (mid-gray), women (pale gray), and children under the age of 10 (white).

Acknowledgments:

The Palestinian History Tapestry Project is indebted to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) for providing these data.

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In 1967 Israel illegally colonised Jerusalem and the West Bank. The panel shows the gradually increasing proportion of illegal colonists in these parts of Palestine.



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Since occupying the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel has unilaterally declared tens of thousands of hectares of so-called 'State Land' for Israeli settlements.



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The Great March of Return, a series of protests at points near the fence between Gaza and Israel, began on 30 March 2018. The protests were initiated by Palestinian activists independently from Palestinian political factions.

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“You have a great place in our hearts. Oh Jerusalem, you are beloved.” From a poem by Lutfi Zaghloul.

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The dove has been a symbol of peace for thousands of years in many different cultures.

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The symbolism of the peace, the olive branch may come from the fact that the olive tree takes a long time to produce fruit,



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When 700,000 Palestinians fled from or were thrown out of their homes during the Nakba in 1948, they took their house keys with them,



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