What survives
Culture & Artifacts
A people survives in its stitches, songs, kitchens, and cinemas. These are the artifacts of Palestinian life — each with the Arabic name it is actually known by.
24 artifacts · 22 named in Arabic · 7 kinds
كوفيةSymbol Keffiyeh
The black-and-white checkered headscarf that became the most recognizable emblem of Palestinian identity and resistance.
Image: Yeghishedaviti (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
تطريزCraft Tatreez
Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery, inscribed by UNESCO in 2021, encoding village, region, and memory in thread.
Image: Ma'moun Othman (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
دبكةDance Dabke
The communal line dance of Palestine and the Levant, performed at weddings and celebrations, with stamping steps that shake the earth.
Image: Sarah Canbel (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
حنظلةSymbol Handala
Naji al-Ali's barefoot refugee child, back turned to the viewer, who has watched over Palestinian political cartoons since 1969.
Image: Friends123 (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons
مفتاح العودةSymbol Keys of Return
The house keys carried out of Palestine in 1948, passed down through refugee generations as deeds to homes and to memory.
Image: Jj M Ḥtp (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons
برتقال يافاSymbol The Jaffa Orange
The Shamouti orange, bred by Palestinian growers near Jaffa in the mid-nineteenth century — Palestine's great export, and after 1948 a brand without its farmers.
Image: Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection, Library of Congress — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
الصبرSymbol The Sabr
The prickly pear, whose Arabic name means patience: planted as a field boundary before 1948, and now growing in hedges that trace the outlines of villages that are no longer there.
Image: Artemas Ward, 'The Encyclopedia of Food' (1923), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons- البطيخ
Symbol The Watermelon
A fruit that carries the flag's four colours — adopted as a Palestinian sign under Israel's ban on the flag, and revived online when the ban returned in other forms.
الخزف الأرمني في القدسCraft Armenian Ceramics of Jerusalem
A craft born from two catastrophes: Armenian genocide survivors brought to Jerusalem in 1919 to retile the Dome of the Rock, whose workshops became a Palestinian tradition.
Image: Deror Avi (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons
الصدف البيت لحميCraft Bethlehem Mother-of-Pearl
Nacre carved into crosses, rosaries, and models of the Church of the Nativity — a Bethlehem trade at least four centuries old, and for much of it a women's trade.
Image: Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection, Library of Congress (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons
زجاج الخليلCraft Hebron Glass
The hand-blown glass of Hebron — blue, green, and amber vessels shaped for centuries in family factories beside the old city.
Image: FlightlessTofu (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
الصابون النابلسيCraft Nabulsi Soap
Ivory cubes of olive oil soap stacked in drying towers — an industry that made Nablus the soap capital of the Levant, and that has been dismantled by earthquake, border, and occupation.
Image: Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection, Library of Congress — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
الفخار الفلسطينيCraft Palestinian Pottery
Red clay thrown on a hand wheel in Gaza and Hebron — cooking pots, water jars, and plant vessels made by families whose surname is simply 'the potter'.
Image: Randa107 (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
الثوبCraft The Thobe
The Palestinian dress and its regional grammar — the chest panel, the coin headdress of Ramallah, the gold-couched malak of Bethlehem — and what happened to that geography after 1948.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons
كنافة نابلسيةCuisine Knafeh Nabulsiyeh
Nablus's dessert of salty white cheese under orange pastry, drenched in syrup and cut from a tray the width of a table.
Image: Guillaume Paumier (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons
مسخن ومقلوبةCuisine Musakhan and Maqluba
Two emblematic dishes of the Palestinian table: sumac-and-onion chicken over taboon bread, and the 'upside-down' rice pot.
Image: Amaiursancho5 (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
الطابونCuisine The Taboon
The clay oven of the Palestinian village, its floor lined with stones that dimple the bread — the vessel that made taboon bread, and made bread-making a shared women's labour.
Image: Photograph by Jak (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons — taboon oven at Kufr Jammal
الزعتر والعكوبCuisine Za'atar and Akkoub
Two wild plants at the centre of the Palestinian table — and the Israeli nature-protection laws that made picking them a criminal offence.
Image: Davidbena (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
الموسيقى الفلسطينيةMusic Palestinian Music
From the improvised verse of zajal and the laments of the mawwal to the hip-hop of DAM — a music that carries memory, celebration, and defiance.
Image: glichfield (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia CommonsFilm Palestinian Cinema
A national cinema without a state — films that carry Palestinian stories from Paradise Now to The Present onto the world's screens.
البذور البلديةTradition Baladi Seeds
The heirloom varieties Palestinian farmers saved from harvest to harvest — jadu'i watermelon, abu samra wheat, baladi tomato — and the seed library in Battir working to put them back in the ground.
Image: Idobi (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons — the terraced village of Battir
صمودTradition Sumud
Steadfastness — the Palestinian ethic of remaining on the land and enduring, turned from a posture of survival into a way of life.
Image: Badarin (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
Tradition The Olive Harvest
The autumn gathering of olives — a season of family, economy, and rootedness in a land where some trees are centuries old.
Image: Badarin (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons- الحكاية الشعبية الفلسطينية
Tradition The Palestinian Hikaye
The winter-evening tale told by women to women and children — a folk narrative form inscribed by UNESCO in 2008, and a critique of society delivered from inside the household.
Nothing of this kind yet.