In most parts of the world, the young exchange friendship bands that signify undying love, but in Gaza, a young girl wears a bracelet given by her father knowing that it is an acceptance of the reality that death might visit them any moment.
In a matter-of-fact way she tells journalists that everyone in her family is wearing identical string bracelets. This, she says, will help them identify the remains of family members in the event that any one of them is killed in an Israeli air strike. That would mean saving their loved ones from the final fate of an unmarked mass grave meant for unidentified bodies. A last-ditch stand to claim in death the dignity of being human denied to them in life.
These bracelets are a preparation for death that Gazans have fashioned in over 18 days of bombing by Israel, among the severest air strikes witnessed in our times, which shows no signs of any let-up. Quite the contrary, in fact. Today’s news reports mention that Israel carried out a ‘limited’ ground campaign in Gaza last night.
Two years ago, when an Israel-Hamas ceasefire was declared after 11 days of air strikes, both sides suffered losses. However, there were greater casualties among children in Gaza (two in Israel and more than 60 in Gaza). The brittle world inhabited by Gaza’s children had prompted the UN secretary general to exclaim, “If there’s a hell on earth, it is the lives of the children in Gaza.”
And now? On October 25, Gaza’s health ministry issued a statement that of the 6,546 Palestinians who had been killed in Israeli air strikes so far, 2,704 were children. Images of the hunched shoulders of male volunteers, cradling tiny forms in their arms, point to the new architecture of loss, matching the bombed landscape that Israel has willed with impunity in Gaza. Moreover, Israel’s act of cutting off water, electricity, food and fuel supplies, which is against international law, has given rise to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
Handala Tells Tales
The children of Gaza have been forsaken by imperious western powers that want the world to think of Israeli bombs raining down on their fragile bodies as just punishment. But there is one figure – fittingly, a child, a boy – who promises to be a witness to the young ones’ suffering caused by each successive strike. In fact, this child has been a steadfast witness to the history of dispossession that has marked Palestinians in over five decades.
Handala. Photo: Wikipedia
The child’s name is Handala and he is 10 years old. He is a cartoon character who was sketched to life by the Palestinian political cartoonist, Naji al-Ali, a towering presence across the Arab world for almost three decades until he was assassinated, in London, in 1987. It was through the figure of the “witness-child” Handala in the cartoon frame that the uncompromisingly independent and sharp cartoonist unpacked his arsenal. Whether it be the story of the cruelty underlying Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the self-righteous and self-serving stance of western powers, the frequent vacillation of the region’s regimes on the Palestine question, or the pain of the common people, which was his pain as well, he was always there to bear witness.
If, 36 years after Naji al-Ali’s killing, the iconic Handala continues to symbolise the spirit of Palestinian resistance, it is because he ‘embodies’ the experience of every dispossessed Palestinian, including the artist, in his very inception.
Handala, named after a local plant with deep roots, bitter fruit and a stubborn tendency to grow back when cut, is a barefoot urchin wearing frayed clothes. He reminds you of a child in a refugee camp. Most importantly, he stands with his back to the viewer, and his hands are clasped behind his back. The set of shoulders suggests a stance of digging in, not giving in.
Naji al-Ali visualised him as a 10-year old. It was how old he was when he and his family were forced to flee Palestine during the nakba – catastrophe – of 1948 that led to Israel’s creation, turning more than 750,000 Palestinians into the dispossessed. The path away from home led them to the refugee camp.
Handala, on a wall in Bilin, a Palestinian village. Photo: Public domain/Wikimedia Commons
Also read: As Israel Kills Thousands of Civilians in Gaza, Remember the ‘International Community’ Helped It Do So
Naji al-Ali’s story
Naji al-Ali grew up in the Ayn al-Hilwa refugee camp in southern Lebanon. It was where the youngster experienced a political awakening, expressing political ideas through drawing, initially on prison walls and then on paper. His talent for drawing was first recognised by the Palestinian poet and journalist Ghassan Kanafani, launching him on a path that would draw the ire of the powerful and shower him with the love of common people.
About the birth of Handala, he said:
“I gave birth to this child in the Gulf and I presented him to the people. His name is Handala and he has promised the people that he will remain true to himself. I drew him as a child who is not beautiful; his hair is like a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon.
Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed, or pampered child, he is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an ‘icon’ that protects me from making mistakes. Even though he is rough, he smells of amber. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection at a time when solutions are presented to us the American way.
Handala was born ten years old, and he will always be ten years old. At that age I left my homeland, and when he returns, Handala will still be ten, and then he will start growing up. The laws of nature do not apply to him. He is unique. Things will become normal again when the homeland returns.
I presented him to the poor and named him Handala as a symbol of bitterness. At first he was a Palestinian child, but his consciousness developed to have a national and then a global and human perspective. He is a simple yet tough child, and this is why people adopted him and felt that he represents their consciousness.”
In 1984, during a conversation with Egyptian novelist and journalist Radwa Ashour, he admitted:
“[…]That child was like a splash of fresh water on my forehead, bringing me to attention and keeping me from error and loss. He was the arrow of the compass, pointing steadily to Palestine. Not just Palestine in geographical terms, Palestine in its humanitarian sense – the symbol of a just cause, whether it is located in Egypt, Vietnam or South Africa.”
As to when Handala’s face would be visible to the world, the cartoonist and political activist had a simple answer – “when dignity is not threatened and when the Arabs regain their sense of freedom and humanity.”
Drawing a Line
Graffiti portrait of Palestinian cartoonist, Naji Al Ali in Ramallah on the 25th anniversary of his assassination, on March 24, 2012. Photo: Amer shomali, CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons
Today, the people of Gaza, all of them refugees from other places, are being described as “human animals”. Stripped of dignity, their very survival hangs in the balance, and the children of “human animals” dutifully wear bracelets knowing what it means.
But, with a few exceptions, the powers that be in the West are blind and deaf to their plight. Across the world people are marching on the streets calling for a ceasefire, but their governments, with one eye on domestic political compulsions, have ears only for the sound of bombs pounding Gaza.
Naji al-Ali knew what he was doing when he sketched the figure of Handala, the boy’s compressed shoulders indicating that he was preparing himself for the long haul. Today, as the spirit of Handala finds himself a lonely witness to the suffering of Gaza’s children, he knows that the world would not be seeing his face any time soon.
But, Handala being Handala, is true to himself. If he cannot be a witness to the lives of Gaza’s children, he will bear testimony to their deaths. That is the reason for his existence.
