WHAT IS THE PALESTINIAN HISTORY TAPESTRY PROJECT

Jan Chalmers

I am a British nurse from Oxford, and an amateur embroiderer. In 1969 and 1970, I lived in Gaza and was employed by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees. I worked as a maternal and child health nurse in the refugee camp in Jabaliya, at the northern end of the Gaza Strip. There, I got to know the local women very well and enjoyed a gossip over coffee most days. I learned about their traditions, rituals and beliefs. I also experienced and shared the community’s feeling of terror when Israeli army halftracks trawled the camp, as they often did. It was a life-changing experience. I made close friends in Gaza and visited most parts of Palestine and I have returned there on several occasions.

During my two years in Gaza, I became an admirer of the very high quality and longstanding traditions of Palestinian embroidery. The UNRWA embroidery center on Omar Al-Mukhtar Street was a favorite place for me, not only to purchase embroidery, but also to watch the women stitching and to learn the names of some of the traditional designs. Most Palestinian embroidery is used to decorate women’s clothes, handbags, cushions and other items. It has only rarely been used to illustrate scenes from Palestinian life.

Tapestries have had significant impact as treasured markers of momentous historical events. One such very celebrated use of embroidery to illustrate life is the Bayeux Tapestry, which provides a pictorial account of the Norman invasion of England in 1066.9 I remember learning about the Bayeux Tapestry at school, but I never thought I would become deeply acquainted with its stitches, colors and story. This familiarity happened because, in 2002, I was invited to help with an embroidery project in a village on the Eastern Cape of South Africa, where the Keiskamma River flows into the Indian Ocean. The Xhosa women living there used colorful beads to decorate clothing, but they were not embroiderers. Introducing the women to the Bayeux Tapestry showed them how stories could be illustrated using embroidery. They were excited at the prospect of using threads to illustrate the history of their people. I was asked to teach them embroidery to create a history tapestry. This led to the now-famous 126-metre Keiskamma History Tapestry, a national treasure that hangs permanently in the South African Parliament Building in Cape Town.10

After a ten-year association with the Keiskamma Art Project, I wondered how I could make use of the experience I had gained through my association with the Keiskamma History Tapestry, specifically. A remark by my husband (who had also lived in Gaza in 1969/70) led me to consider whether the celebrated embroidery skills of Palestinian women could be used to create a tapestry illustrating the history of Palestine and Palestinians. This history is insufficiently known, and Britain’s disastrous role in it—promising the Palestinian homeland to foreign colonists and failing to protect the rights of indigenous Palestinians—has never been adequately acknowledged.

As a British citizen, I felt shame at Britain’s betrayal of the Palestinian people. I felt that working with Palestinian embroiderers to create a tapestry illustrating their history would be a new way of expressing solidarity with them. In 2012, I invited two British friends, one of them married to a Palestinian, to join me in establishing a Palestinian History Tapestry Project. We agreed that such a tapestry would not only record an insufficiently appreciated history of Palestine and Palestinians but would also extend the traditional craft of Palestinian needlewomen to illustrate this history, as well as generate income for them and their families. These remained the Project’s objectives throughout its first decade.

But how do you cover a history that spans thousands of years, I wondered, and where do you begin? Two professional historians prepared a historical chronology to help the Project select images to be used in the Tapestry. It was decided to start with an illustration of the walled city of Jericho during the Neolithic era, and to continue into the 21st century.

Deciding which images should follow Jericho was not an easy task. I assembled the sketches and photographs that had been collected and Ghada Karmi, our Founding Patron and an historian, came to Oxford one Sunday afternoon to help with the selection. It was evident we needed more input, so an image selection subcommittee with wholly Palestinian membership was established, particularly to select images for the years following the 1947–49 ethnic cleansing.

The initial challenge I faced was how to recruit Palestinian embroiderers from within and outside Palestine: how to maintain contact with them, how to choose and distribute the images to be embroidered and how to pay for the work done. The Palestinian Diaspora presented a challenge. I began by visiting places where I already had Palestinian friends—the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Lebanon and Jordan. Many of the Palestinian embroiderers I met were impressed by the Keiskamma History Tapestry and excited about the idea of making something so significant in addition to traditional uses of embroidery. We connected on a more personal level as well. I remember one woman I met near Hebron who asked me why I left my hair so white. There was mirth when I told her it was a color from God, not from a bottle.

I built many great relationships with the Palestinian embroiderers but, sadly, I could not return as often as I would have liked—especially to Gaza, which has been under siege since 2007. It was evident that I needed locally-based coordinators to help grow the Project and liaise with the many embroiderers who expressed interest.

The first Field Coordinator—Jamila—volunteered to coordinate Project work in the Gaza Strip. I knew Jamila well because she had been a Gaza Scholar in the scholarship scheme run by Oxford Brookes University. On returning to Gaza on completion of her Master’s degree, she soon recruited some embroiderers for the Palestinian History Tapestry Project. As I am familiar with Gaza and still know many people living there, it was easy for Jamila and me to discuss how coordination between Gaza and Oxford could be facilitated.

Importantly, it was through Jamila that I was introduced to Ibrahim, a Gaza-based designer, whose contributions became indispensable to the Project. He was an important source of encouragement and guidance for me and became a key influence in organizing the Palestinian History Tapestry Project, later becoming a co-Chair. During my visit to Gaza, I met Ibrahim for the first time in his workplace, Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children, in Gaza City. He was the manager of an enterprise in which young people with hearing disabilities produced handmade arts and crafts. I also visited embroiderers at Albeit Al-Salaam. They went on to stitch the henna party panel, which later became the Tapestry’s flagship image.

After coordination arrangements in Gaza had been shown to work, other women we knew volunteered to be Field Coordinators in Ramallah, the Naqab, Jordan and Lebanon. It has been a joy to collaborate with the five Field Coordinators, even though there have been times when it has been difficult for them and their embroiderer colleagues—skirmishes within Ein el-Helwe refugee camp in Lebanon, repeated Israeli assaults on Gaza, and Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes and villages in the Naqab. Against the odds, production of tapestry panels continued.

Although those developing and implementing the infrastructure for the Project were (like me) unpaid volunteers, funds were needed for designers and embroiderers. My fundraising skills were nil, but nonetheless sufficient money was raised to support the work, thanks to over 100 donors, many of them my friends and relatives. I and others sold Palestinian embroidery at charity events and also to those attending our talks about the Project. We invited donations on these occasions, as well as through our website and in letters to groups known to support Palestinians.

The first ten years of the Project culminated in one hundred colorful, moving, tapestry panels, each as unique as the embroiderer who had stitched it. The embroiderers took on the work of the Tapestry Project with enthusiasm. Some were interested to know more about their history and their forebears and others who had settled in the country hundreds of years before.

The conclusion of the first phase of the Palestinian History Tapestry was marked with two public exhibitions and Tapestry launches at the end of 2018, coincident with the 50th anniversary of UN Resolution 194, which asserted the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford hosted the first of these launches, and Middle East Monitor and the P21 Gallery in London hosted the second, with the Palestinian Ambassador in attendance.

The end of the Project’s first decade marked a milestone at which the Project Committee agreed that its future should be conceptualized and led by Palestinians. Everyone associated with the Project was delighted when Jehan Alfarra and Ibrahim Muhtadi agreed to co-chair the Palestinian History Tapestry Project going forward. Palestinian embroiderers and designers will continue to be commissioned by the Project to stitch additional panels illustrating past and current events and themes.

9 “The Bayeux Tapestry,” Bayeux Museum, last accessed September 30, 2021, https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/

10 Keiskamma Trust, last accessed September 30, 2021, http://www.keiskamma.org/