Ramallah (UNA/WAFA) – 77 years have passed since that painting depicted the homeland, its pain and dispersion, its people, its land and its story, and was called “The Palestinian Nakba.”
Throughout all those years, until today, the painting has been repeated in different sizes, shapes, colors, and expressions, about the homeland and its people, about its diaspora and its survival.
This year, 2025, the National Painting coincides with the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, a Nakba no less horrific, criminal, and impotent. The Israeli war of extermination continues for the 586th consecutive day, with more than 53 Palestinians martyred and more than 120 injured, amidst an ongoing and intensified aggression against the camps in the northern West Bank, targeting the right of return and the refugee issue.
Because art is an integral part of resistance, the painting continued to depict the country in all its length and breadth, its children and women, its youth and its elderly, its stones and its attics, its roses and thorns and its orchards, its olives and oranges, its aloes and grapes and its orchards, its springs and hills and its neighborhoods, the sea and the sewing needle and the house key.
This year, 77 paintings by 77 artists from all over the world, from Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank, the interior, and refugee camps, were brought together to tell a 77-year-old story that has yet to end. The exhibition, titled “We Will Not Leave… Palestine Will Remain for the Palestinians,” opened at the Mahmoud Darwish Museum and moved two days later to the Al-Bireh Cultural Center in the city of Al-Bireh.
These paintings depicted key moments of the Nakba, from life before the displacement in 1948, to scenes of uprooting and displacement, through the ongoing repercussions of the Nakba, the suffering of refugees, the repeated attacks on camps, and the ongoing forced displacement, all the way to the remembrance of the depopulated villages, reviving their memory in the consciousness of generations, and the continuation of the dream of return.
The paintings also depicted the Palestinian countryside with its simplicity, agricultural tools, and the seasons of the Palestinian village before its displacement and uprooting of its original inhabitants. They also depicted the longing for the sea and the Palestinian coast, its cities, towns, and villages, the barbed wire around Jerusalem and the villages that were considered border areas, the oranges of Jaffa, the sea of Haifa, Acre, and Umm Khalid, the city markets and their heritage, religious, and tourist landmarks, and the buses that used to depart from Palestine to the Arab capitals, moving freely between all Palestinian cities, Baghdad, Cairo, Amman, Kuwait, Beirut, and Damascus. Meanwhile, the “key of return” remained the icon and symbol embodied in the majority of the participating paintings.
In an interview with WAFA, Osama Nazzal, head of the Palestinian Artists Association, explained that art is a noble and national message, through which we can transcend all borders and geographical barriers and reach all cultures and societies around the world.
He added that the exhibition's message is to adhere to national identity and culture, and to embody the collective national concern of all Palestinians. He stressed that the Palestinian artist is an integral part of the national struggle, and that the brush and color are tools of resistance no less important than words and positions. He recalled a saying that the martyr Yasser Arafat often repeated in cultural forums: "The greatness of this revolution is that it is not a gun. If it were only a gun, it would be a highway robbery. Rather, it is the poetry of a poet, the brush of an artist, the pen of a writer, the scalpel of a surgeon, and the needle of a girl sewing the shirt of her fedayeen and her husband."
In turn, Nevin Abu Al-Walaa, from the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art, told WAFA: “Today I am participating with three paintings in this exhibition. The first depicts the fear of a Palestinian mother during the Nakba as she embraces her child who is unaware of what is happening around him. The second depicts the destruction in Gaza and children sleeping amidst this ongoing terror. In the corner, there is a lantern that illuminates some of the darkness and gives hope for the future. The third depicts buses of refugees and displaced persons in 1967 as they leave their homeland, dreaming of returning to it, carrying their children with them.”
It's worth noting that the art exhibition "We Will Not Leave... Palestine Will Remain for the Palestinians" will run for five days as part of this year's Nakba commemoration series. The exhibition is being held in collaboration with the Mahmoud Darwish Foundation, the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art, the Higher Committee for the Commemoration of the Nakba, the Palestine Liberation Organization's Department of Refugee Affairs, and the Palestinian Ministry of Culture.
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