The people
Figures
Historians who preserved the record, medics who ran toward the wounded, journalists who carried the story, artists who refused erasure.
78 entries · 8 callings
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Rashid Khalidi
رشيد خالديHistorian and professor1948–Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and one of the most influential historians of modern Palestine.Edward W. Said
إدوارد سعيدLiterary critic and public intellectual1935–2003The Jerusalem-born critic whose Orientalism remade the study of empire, and who spent three decades arguing that Palestinians were owed what he called permission to narrate.Fayez Sayegh
فايز صايغIntellectual, diplomat, and UN delegate1922–1980Palestinian philosopher and diplomat who founded the PLO's Palestine Research Center, produced the first systematic analysis of Zionism as settler colonialism, and was a principal architect of the UN's 1975 resolution declaring Zionism a form of racism.Ghassan Kanafani
غسان كنفانيNovelist, editor of al-Hadaf, and spokesman of the PFLP1936–1972One of the great Arabic novelists of the century and the Popular Front's spokesman, killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 1972 with his niece Lamis.Bisan Owda
Journalist and filmmaker reporting from GazaThe Palestinian reporter whose first-person AJ+ report documented civilian life and displacement in Gaza and won both a Peabody and a 2024 News & Documentary Emmy.Shireen Abu Akleh
شيرين أبو عاقلةJournalist, Al Jazeera correspondent1971–2022Veteran Al Jazeera correspondent and household name across the Arab world, killed while covering an Israeli raid in Jenin in 2022.Razan al-Najjar
رزان النجارVolunteer paramedic1996–2018A 21-year-old volunteer paramedic from Khan Younis, shot dead by an Israeli sniper while tending to wounded protesters in Gaza in 2018.Naji al-Ali
ناجي العليPolitical cartoonist, creator of Handalac. 1938–1987The Arab world's most beloved political cartoonist, whose barefoot child Handala became the conscience of Palestine.George Habash
جورج حبشPhysician, founder of the Arab Nationalist Movement and the PFLP1925–2008The physician from Lydda, expelled with his town in 1948, who founded the Arab Nationalist Movement and then the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad)
خليل الوزير (أبو جهاد)Co-founder of Fatah and deputy commander-in-chief of the Palestinian revolution's forces1935–1988Expelled from Ramla at twelve, he co-founded Fatah in Kuwait in 1959, ran its operations inside occupied Palestine, helped architect the First Intifada, and was assassinated by an Israeli commando unit in Tunis in 1988.Yasser Arafat
ياسر عرفاتFounder of Fatah, chairman of the PLO, president of the State of Palestine1929–2004Founder of Fatah and chairman of the PLO for thirty-five years, who told the UN in 1974 that he came bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun.
The full record
Adel Manna
عادل مناعHistorian of Ottoman Palestine and of the Palestinians who remained1947–Palestinian historian of Ottoman Palestine and of the Palestinians who were not expelled in 1948 — the minority whose survival inside Israel he was the first to write as a social history from within.Aref al-Aref
عارف العارفHistorian of the Nakba1892–1973Ottoman officer, Siberian prisoner of war, Mandate district officer, mayor of Jerusalem — and the man who spent the years after 1948 interviewing survivors across the Arab world to write the six-volume Arabic history of the catastrophe he had watched happen.Avi Shlaim
أفي شلايمHistorian and emeritus professor of international relations1945–Iraqi-born Israeli-British historian at Oxford, one of Israel's 'New Historians', whose archival work on 1948 and its aftermath challenged the founding myths of the Israeli state.Dimitri Baramki
ديمتري برامكيArchaeologist1909–1984Chief archaeologist of Mandate Palestine and excavator of Hisham's Palace at Jericho, who lost his country in 1948 and rebuilt his career in the museum of the American University of Beirut.Elias Sanbar
إلياس صنبرHistorian, translator, and diplomat1947–Carried out of Haifa as an infant in 1948, he became the historian of Palestinian photography, Darwish's French translator, and Palestine's ambassador to UNESCO.Ilan Pappé
إيلان بابيهHistorian and professor1954–Israeli historian at the University of Exeter whose archival work on 1948 reshaped the scholarly debate over the Nakba.Nur Masalha
نور مصالحةHistorian and professor1957–Palestinian historian whose work on memory, the Nakba, and the long history of Palestine challenges the erasure of the country's indigenous past.Rosemary Sayigh
روزماري صايغAnthropologist and oral historian1927–For half a century she recorded Palestinian refugees in Lebanon's camps in their own words, arguing that a people's history had to be built from below or it would not be built at all.Salman Abu Sitta
سلمان أبو ستةEngineer and cartographer of the Nakba1937–Civil engineer turned mapmaker, who spent decades reconstructing the villages, land holdings, and place names of pre-1948 Palestine into an atlas and a register of the depopulated.Walid Khalidi
وليد خالديHistorian and founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies1925–2026Palestinian historian whose documentary works, above all *All That Remains*, preserved the record of the villages emptied in 1948.Widad Kawar
وداد قعوارCollector and historian of Palestinian dress1931–Over fifty years she assembled more than two thousand Palestinian and Jordanian dresses and textiles, saving a village-by-village record of dress that 1948 had otherwise scattered.Diana Buttu
ديانا بطوLawyer and political analystPalestinian-Canadian lawyer who advised the PLO's negotiating team from 2000 to 2005 and has since become one of the sharpest analysts of the failed negotiations process.Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
إبراهيم أبو لغدPolitical scientist1929–2001He left Jaffa on the last ship out of the port in May 1948, built Arab-American scholarship in the United States for four decades, then returned to teach at Birzeit and be buried at home.Khalil al-Sakakini
خليل السكاكينيEducator and diarist1878–1953Jerusalem teacher who built a school without grades or punishments, and kept a diary for forty-five years that is now one of the fullest private records of Palestinian life before 1948.Khalil Beidas
خليل بيدسNovelist, translator and editor of al-Nafa'is1875–1949The Nazareth schoolmaster who brought Pushkin and Tolstoy into Arabic, founded the magazine that carried a generation of Palestinian writing, was sentenced to death by the Ottomans and to fifteen years by the British — and lost his library and his manuscripts in 1948.Najati Sidqi
نجاتي صدقيCommunist writer and translator1905–1979The Jerusalem postal clerk who studied in Moscow, served two years in Acre and Jaffa prisons, was sent by the Comintern to Spain in 1936 to argue Franco's Moroccan troops out of the war, and broke with the party over the Nazi–Soviet pact.Noura Erakat
نورة عريقاتHuman rights attorney and legal scholar1980–Palestinian-American human rights attorney and Rutgers professor whose book Justice for Some examines how international law has shaped — and so often failed — the Palestinian struggle.Raja Shehadeh
رجا شحادةWriter and human rights lawyer1951–Ramallah-based writer and lawyer, founder of Al-Haq, whose memoirs record the vanishing landscape of the West Bank.Suad Amiry
سعاد العامريArchitect and writer1951–Founder of Riwaq, the first organisation dedicated to conserving Palestinian architectural heritage, and author of a curfew diary that won Italy's Viareggio Prize.Wael Zuaiter
وائل زعيترWriter, translator and PLO representative in Rome, first man killed in the Wrath of God assassinations1934–1972The Nablus-born translator and PLO representative in Rome — a friend of Moravia, Genet and Pasolini, at work on the first Italian translation of the Thousand and One Nights — shot dead by Israeli agents outside his apartment on 16 October 1972.Sadhij Nassar
ساذج نصّارJournalist and organiser of the Arab Women's Union1900–1970Editor at Haifa's al-Karmil, founder of the Arab Women's Union, and the first Palestinian woman the British Mandate imprisoned for her politics — eleven months in the Bethlehem detention camp, on a file that described her as a very dangerous woman.Wael al-Dahdouh
وائل الدحدوحJournalist, Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief1970–Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, who kept reporting through the killing of his wife, son, daughter, and grandson in 2023 and became a global symbol of press freedom.Eyad al-Sarraj
إياد السراجPsychiatrist and founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme1944–2013Gaza's first practising psychiatrist, who built mental health care under occupation into a form of human rights work.Mustafa Barghouti
مصطفى البرغوثيPhysician, founder of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society and general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative1954–The Moscow-trained physician who built the Palestinian Medical Relief Society into a health service reaching over a million patients a year, co-founded the Palestinian National Initiative with Edward Said and Haidar Abdel Shafi, and came second to Abbas in the 2005 presidential election.Tawfiq Canaan
توفيق كنعانPhysician and ethnographer1882–1964Jerusalem physician who documented Palestinian folk life — amulets, saints' shrines, and popular medicine — in foundational works of early twentieth-century ethnography.Hind al-Husseini
هند الحسينيEducator and founder of Dar al-Tifl al-Arabi1916–1994The Jerusalem educator who opened her home to children displaced from Deir Yasin in 1948 and built that act of care into Dar al-Tifl al-Arabi.Annemarie Jacir
آن ماري جاسرFilmmaker and founder of Philistine Films1974–Palestinian filmmaker whose four features — from *Salt of This Sea* to *Palestine 36* — have all represented Palestine at the Academy Awards.Elia Suleiman
إيليا سليمانFilmmaker1960–Nazareth-born filmmaker whose deadpan, near-silent cinema turned Palestinian life under occupation into absurd, precise comedy.Emily Jacir
إميلي جاسرArtist1970–Artist who used her American passport to carry out the errands Palestinians were not permitted to make themselves, and who sewed the names of 418 destroyed villages into a refugee tent.Ismail Shammout
إسماعيل شموطPainter1930–2006Pioneering Palestinian painter whose images of the 1948 expulsion from Lydda — above all *Where to?* (1953) — became icons of the Nakba.Juliano Mer-Khamis
جوليانو مير خميسActor and founder of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin1958–2011Actor and director who founded the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp and was assassinated outside it in 2011.Kamal Boullata
كمال بلاطةPainter and art historian1942–2019A Jerusalem painter locked out of his city by the 1967 war, who built an abstraction out of Kufic script and the eight-pointed star, and wrote the first full history of Palestinian art.Karimeh Abbud
كريمة عبودPhotographer1893–1940The first woman photographer in Palestine, who stamped her prints 'Karimeh Abbud — Lady Photographer' and left a portrait record of Palestinian life two decades before the Nakba.Le Trio Joubran
الثلاثي جبرانOud trio2004–Three brothers from Nazareth, sons of an oud maker, who built an ensemble out of three ouds alone — and who accompanied Mahmoud Darwish on stage until his death.Mona Hatoum
منى حاطومInstallation and video artist1952–Palestinian-British artist whose installations turn familiar objects into unsettling meditations on displacement, the body, and systems of control.Nuh Ibrahim
نوح إبراهيمZajal poet of the 1936 revolt1913–1938The printing-press worker from Haifa who wrote in the language people actually spoke, and whose lament for the three men hanged at Acre in 1930 became the most-sung Palestinian song of the century. The British censor banned his collected work by name.Reem Kelani
ريم كيلانيSinger, music researcher, and broadcaster1963–Palestinian-British singer and researcher who has spent three decades collecting, reviving, and performing traditional Palestinian song, blending it with jazz.Rim Banna
ريم بنّاSinger and composer1966–2018The Nazareth singer who went looking for the Palestinian children's songs that were being forgotten, recorded them, and set modern Palestinian poetry to her own melodies.Sliman Mansour
سليمان منصورPainter1947–Palestinian painter whose images of porters, peasants, and olive trees made him a founding figure of contemporary Palestinian art.Vera Tamari
فيرا تماريCeramicist, installation artist, and art historian1945–Ceramicist and museum-builder who, after Israeli tanks crushed hundreds of cars in Ramallah in 2002, lined five of the wrecks up on a road she built and called it Going for a Ride?Atta al-Zir
عطا الزيرRebel of the Buraq uprising, hanged at Acre1895–1930The eldest of the three men hanged at Acre on 17 June 1930. A labourer and farmer from Hebron, he dictated his last letter to his mother in peasant dialect: dance, mother, do not grieve — and plant olives over the grave.Fatima Ghazzal
فاطمة غزالFighter of the 1936 revoltd. 1936A peasant woman of Azzun, past fifty, shot by British soldiers on 26 June 1936 while carrying food and water to fighters holding the ground west of her village. Palestinians count her as the first woman martyr of the modern national movement.Fuad Hijazi
فؤاد حجازيRebel of the Buraq uprising, hanged at Acre1904–1930The youngest of the three men hanged by the British at Acre prison on 17 June 1930. A day before he died he wrote home asking that the date of his hanging be kept every year as a day of songs and speeches — and it has been.Issam Abdul Hadi
عصام عبد الهاديFirst president of the General Union of Palestinian Women1928–2013The Nablus women's organizer who led the General Union of Palestinian Women from its founding in 1965 until 2009, was tortured and deported by Israel in 1969, and became the first woman on the PLO's Central Council.Khalida Jarrar
خالدة جرارPFLP parliamentarian and prisoners' rights advocate, imprisoned five times by Israel1963–The Nablus-born parliamentarian and Addameer director, arrested five times and held for years in administrative detention and solitary confinement — denied even her daughter's funeral — who emerged from each imprisonment restating the same demand: freedom from colonial domination.Leila Khaled
ليلى خالدPFLP political bureau member and hijacker of 1969 and 19701944–Driven from Haifa at four, she hijacked two airliners for the PFLP in 1969 and 1970 and has sat on the front's political bureau since 2005.Muhammad Jamjoum
محمد جمجومRebel of the Buraq uprising, hanged at Acre1902–1930Hanged with Fuad Hijazi and Atta al-Zir at Acre on 17 June 1930. His last letter asked that the nation not sell one span of its land — and that the words on his grave read: complete independence or a bitter death.Omar Barghouti
عمر البرغوثيCo-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movementThe human rights defender who co-founded the BDS movement in 2005 after a year of consultations across Palestinian society, and has lived under an Israeli travel ban and judicial harassment for leading its nonviolent campaign ever since.Samiha Khalil
سميحة خليلFounder of In'ash al-Usra and the only candidate ever to run against Yasser Arafat1923–1999The 'Oak Tree of Palestine' from Anabta, who built the Family Revival Society into a lifeline for thousands of families under occupation, was arrested six times, and took 12 percent of the vote against Yasser Arafat in 1996.Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni
عبد القادر الحسينيCommander of the Army of the Holy War, killed at al-Qastal in April 19481908–1948The most prominent Palestinian field commander of his generation, who fought in the 1936–39 rebellion, rebuilt the Army of the Holy War after the partition resolution, and was killed retaking al-Qastal on 8 April 1948.Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi
عبد العزيز الرنتيسيPediatrician and co-founder of Hamas, killed three weeks after succeeding Ahmed Yassin1947–2004The pediatrician from Yibna, a refugee at six months old, who was one of the seven founders of Hamas in 1987, spokesman of the Marj al-Zuhur deportees, and was killed by Israeli missiles on 17 April 2004, twenty-six days after succeeding Ahmed Yassin.Abu Ali Mustafa
أبو علي مصطفىSecretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine1938–2001Mustafa al-Zabri, the peasant's son who spent five years in a desert prison and thirty-two in exile, returned in 1999 to lead the PFLP and was killed by an Israeli missile in his Ramallah office.Faisal al-Husseini
فيصل الحسينيPLO Executive Committee member and head of Jerusalem affairs; founder of the Arab Studies Society at Orient House1940–2001Son of Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, known as the Lion of Jerusalem — he built Orient House into the PLO's political address in the occupied city and defended its Arab identity until his death in 2001.Farhan al-Saadi
فرحان السعديQassamite commander, hanged at Acrec. 1858–1937The old sheikh from a village west of Jenin who fired the opening shot of the 1936 revolt, and whom the British hanged at Acre in November 1937 while he was keeping the Ramadan fast. He was around eighty.Fathi Shaqaqi
فتحي الشقاقيPhysician and founder of the Islamic Jihad Movement, assassinated in Malta in 19951951–1995The physician from Rafah refugee camp, son of a family expelled from Zarnuqa, who founded the Islamic Jihad Movement and was shot dead by Mossad agents on the island of Malta on 26 October 1995.Haidar Abdel Shafi
حيدر عبد الشافيPhysician and head of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference1919–2007Gaza physician who founded the Red Crescent Society in Gaza and headed the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace conference.Hanan Ashrawi
حنان عشراويLegislator, scholar, and peace negotiator1946–Palestinian legislator and scholar who became one of the most recognisable voices of the Palestinian cause during the 1990s peace negotiations.Intissar al-Wazir (Umm Jihad)
انتصار الوزير (أم جهاد)First woman member of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority's first minister of social affairs1941–The Gaza City militant who became Fatah's first woman member in 1959, built the PLO's institutions for the families of martyrs and prisoners, survived her husband Khalil al-Wazir's assassination beside her in Tunis, and returned from decades of exile as minister of social affairs.Izz al-Din al-Qassam
عز الدين القسّامPreacher of Haifa's Istiqlal Mosque who organized the first armed revolt against British rule1882–1935The al-Azhar-educated preacher who ministered to Haifa's dispossessed peasants, declared armed revolt against British rule in November 1935, and whose death in battle at Ya'bad helped ignite the Great Rebellion of 1936–39.Kamal Nasser
كمال ناصرPoet, PLO Executive Committee member and official spokesman1925–1973The poet from Birzeit who edited the PLO's Filastin al-Thawra and spoke for the revolution until Israeli agents killed him in Beirut in April 1973 — Salah Khalaf called him "the conscience of the Palestinian revolution."Mahmoud Hamshari
محمود الهمشريFirst PLO representative in Paris, killed by an Israeli bomb planted in his home1938–1973The schoolteacher from Umm Khalid who became the PLO's first representative in Paris, wounded by an explosive device planted by Israeli intelligence on 8 December 1972; he died of his injuries a month later.Marwan Barghouti
مروان البرغوثيGeneral secretary of Fatah in the West Bank, imprisoned in Israel since 20021959–The Fatah leader from Kobar, imprisoned since 2002 under five life sentences after an Inter-Parliamentary Union-appointed observer concluded that breaches of international law made a fair trial impossible and that guilt had not been established — an observer's conclusion, not a court acquittal.Nayef Hawatmeh
نايف حواتمةFounder and secretary-general of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine1935–The Arab Nationalist Movement organiser who split from the PFLP in 1969 to found the DFLP, and who pressed the PLO towards its 1974 interim programme.Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad)
صلاح خلف (أبو إياد)Co-founder of Fatah and head of PLO intelligence and security1933–1991The Jaffa-born co-founder of Fatah who ran the PLO's security apparatus, was among the first Palestinian leaders to advocate a two-state solution, and was assassinated in Tunis in 1991 by an agent of the Abu Nidal group.Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
أحمد إسماعيل ياسينFounder and spiritual leader of Hamas, assassinated in Gaza in 20041936–2004The quadriplegic refugee preacher from al-Jura who founded Hamas in December 1987 and was killed by Israeli helicopter missiles as he left dawn prayers in Gaza on 22 March 2004.Wadie Haddad
وديع حدادPhysician and head of the PFLP's external operations branch1927–1978Physician, co-founder of the Arab Nationalist Movement and the PFLP, and the architect of its aircraft hijackings — expelled by his own front, killed by poison in 1978.Yusuf Abu Durra
يوسف أبو درةCommander of the 1936–39 revolt1900–1939A railway worker from a village near Jenin who escaped the cordon at Ya'bad where Qassam was killed, became one of the five commanders of the Great Revolt, stormed Atlit prison to free its inmates — and was handed to the British by the Arab Legion and hanged.
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