The catastrophe began when the head of Zionist thought, German-Jewish thinker Moshe Hess, promoted the revival of the Jewish nation, an idea espoused by the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl, who promoted over the period of the British Mandate over Palestine that “Palestine is a land without a people for a people without a land.”
As a result, more than 800,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their villages and cities by force of arms and threats by Zionist gangs, out of a million and 400,000 Palestinians who were residing in historic Palestine in 1948, according to the Palestinian News and Information Agency (WAFA). More than 85% of the area of historical Palestine, which amounts to about 27 thousand square kilometers, including its resources and population.
The land of sad oranges
Perhaps the famous Palestinian martyr Ghassan Kanafani stands out in the Arab collective mind as the political writer who heated the occupation with resistance and writing until he was assassinated in Beirut on July 8, 1972 by the Mossad. what you deserve.
Kanafani drew a number of sketches and drawings that trace the psychological impact of the Nakba and the subsequent displacement and displacement in several works, including "The Displaced Person", in which an old man is surrounded by incomprehensible faces, a martyr on his left and others in front of him, all of whom are absent from death, loss and displacement to remain alone in the darkness.
It was yesterday and it will be gone tomorrow
The effects of the Nakba appeared in several plastic works, many of them mourning the historical homeland to which it was impossible for its people to return to it, even if the identity confirms that they are Palestinians and the key to the house is still hanging in their necks - after decades ago - as a treasure they fear losing, for example but not limited to the present time. The Palestinian plastic artist Suleiman Mansour, 72 years after the Nakba, continues to paint the Palestinian revolution against the occupier and the dream of return as if the Nakba was yesterday and will disappear tomorrow, just as it appears in his painting "..the struggle continues".
Like most of Mansour's works, the painting "..and the struggle continues" traces the Nakba in the Palestinian collective mind, the land that was displaced when its owners were displaced, how the Palestinian carried, not only the key to his home, but his sacred sanctuary, his anger and hostility to the Zionist occupier, and above all his identity Palestine, which refuses to be obliterated.
Generation after generation, whether it witnessed the catastrophe or not, it carries a burden between its ribs.
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Handala and dream of return
Despite the passage of decades since the assassination of the Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali, his cartoon character “Handala” is always alive and refuses to die, as if the bullets of treachery, when they fell on the body of Al-Ali, granted Hanzala immortality. Al-Ali died and Handala lived to remain present in every great Palestinian and Arab event. The Arab, whether Palestinian or not, with the bitterness of defeat and the ugliness of running away from the cause.
"The Savior from Traps, Deceptions, and Eloquent Cheating Methods Practiced by Some" (Palestinian writer and critic Muhammad Al-Asaad on the art of Naji Al-Ali).
The character of Handala is one of the most prominent figures drawn by the artist, Naji Al-Ali (communication sites)
Perhaps the most prominent characteristic of Naji Al-Ali is his accurate transmission of the catastrophe of the Nakba and the Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine in his artworks, looking forward to the future with a careful look and insight, not caring about the dangers he might be exposed to or the threats he was receiving. Handhala, the Arabic cartoon character dipped in bitter bittersweet.
On the authority of Handala, Naji says, “Handala was born at ten years old and will always be ten years old. At that age he left Palestine, and when Handala returns to Palestine he will be after ten years of age and then begin to grow up. The laws of nature do not apply to him because he is an exception, just as losing the homeland is an exception. ".
As for the reason for wrapping his hands, Naji Al-Ali said, "His shoulder was shouldered after the October 1973 war, because the region was witnessing a comprehensive process of subjugation and normalization, and here the boy's shoulder strap was an indication of his refusal to participate in the American settlement solutions in the region. He is rebellious and not a normalizer."