Telling Palestinian Stories Through Craft & Design

From an embroidered stitch to forming a ceramic bowl, weaving a rug or carving wood, these acts are about craftsmanship and tradition, but they are also acts of life itself, particularly when they are being done in a place that has been devastated by war, or by someone displaced from home and family due to war, or which might be considered political by their government. In such moments, the power of these creative practices become essential as a way to keep a culture alive. “Crafts are really crucial for maintaining a kind of social structure and historical narratives. It’s not just about the product or the design. It’s life, it’s community, it’s culture,” states Annelys de Vet, designer, professor and co-founder along with Khaled Hourani, of Disarming Design from Palestine, a design project and non-profit organization founded in 2012. For over a decade, Disarming Design has worked with Palestinian artists, establishing workshops, residencies and design-related events, including a community centre in Ramallah between 2015-2019. One of the artists with whom they collaborated is Ibrahim Muhtadi, an architect and jewellery designer from Gaza. In addition to his design practice, Muhtadi worked for many years as the Sulafa Manager with the Sulafa Embroidery Center in Gaza, established by UNRWA, one of the country’s top organizations that employs refugee Palestinian women to make embroidered home goods and clothing. He also was the Business and Marketing Manager for the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children for over 15-years. Muhtadi was living and working in Gaza City when the war broke out on October 7th, 2023. Just two days later, his studio and home were destroyed. He evacuated to the south with his family – including his pregnant wife – and they were lucky to have the papers to make it into Cairo before she gave birth. They have been there since January 2024, but in the Fall of 2024, Muhtadi was able to use his visa to go to Brussels, where he is setting up his life again in order to bring over his family.

Muhtadi is currently working on his own jewellery collection, which includes a unique pair of silver earrings inspired by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and serving as the Co-chair and the Design Adviser of the UK-based Palestinian History Tapestry. He is also partnering with Disarming Design, to oversee all of the production of crafts and objects by Palestinian artists for their studio in Sint Pieters-Leew, Belgium (soon to be in Brussels). While the logistics of planning and making crafts and objects in Palestine remain extremely complicated, it creates a link to the people in Gaza and the West Bank and serves as a kind of resistance to the continued destruction and repression across the country. Muhtadi told a story about a generations-long ceramics studio in Hebron run by Khaled Fakhouri, which has since been shut down by Israel, but through their web shop they try to maintain any orders. However, cultural repression tactics extend even to shipping, a Kafkaesque feat that has essentially become a near impossibility. In the West Bank, shipping has to be done by an Israeli company, requiring the help of numerous people just to get any packages into the right zone to ship, and then the risk becomes about the package being confiscated or destroyed before leaving the ground. And yet. Organizations across the region are still managing to keep their practice alive. The NGO, Bethlehem Fair Trade Artisans, and Kissweh, an embroidery studio that works with Palestinian craftswomen living in refugee camps in Lebanon, are two leading projects that continue onward. As Muhtadi says, “this is our main message, just keep talking about our story, promoting our story and letting the world know the truth. This is part of the solidarity and support of Palestine and especially for the artists and artisans. We are not only in need of humanitarian aid, yes, of course this is essential, but we also need to support the artisans and the artists in Palestine and in Gaza in order to rebuild.”

In some cases, the idea of homeland has already been erased, as in the case of the Bedouin communities in southern Israel, very close to the Gaza border. According to Hana Elsana, Program Director for the Sidreh Foundation, there are over 100,000 ‘unrecognized’ Palestinian Bedouin people living inside the Israeli border. They are considered stateless despite having proof of living on the land for centuries. Sidreh, established in 1998 by Khadra Elsana, helps support these Bedouin communities though socioeconomic programs in education, small business development and health, as well as through their weaving workshop, called the Lakiya Weaving Workshop, which, in addition to their own collections, collaborates with contemporary designers around the world, to create rugs, tapestries, cushions and other decorative objects. Dutch designers BCXSY began working with Sidreh in 2011 for the “Balance” rug collection.” The traditional way of weaving here is using a rectangular floor loom, so they worked with the women to design a rug that would work within the constraints of the weaving style. As Boaz Cohen explained: “Our goal with the design was to highlight the optimism and positive approach of the women-run NGO, Sidreh, which contrasted with the rather harsh realities of inequality, in the day-to-day life of these Bedouin women.” The “Balance” rug collection consists of seven area rugs. As Cohen describes: “The rugs’ forms represent imaginary charts, as well as the desert landscape of the Negev. While the weaving technique is limited in dimensions and decorative elements, we developed a formal language through a patchwork of four runners in four different widths and colors. We also applied the traditional tassels and fringes in an unconventional manner, resulting in an intriguing and suspenseful design. The unusual shapes affect the way their surrounding space is perceived.”

Despite the current situation on the ground, the “Balance” rugs are available for order and they can be customised. The weavers want to continue to work as it provides an important source of revenue for the organization. Hana notes that: “As an organization we have been massively impacted by the situation, because we rely on tourism, experiences and weaving workshops, all of which has stopped completely and we cannot get support from the government. We rely on individual funders but this is also slowing down and with less focus on Bedouin women.” And it’s not just the support to the women and families, but it is a complete breakdown of centuries long agricultural traditions, such as tending to the sheep, how they graze and are cared for. “We work with local materials – local sheep – we use everything that is around us,” Hana says, demonstrating how all of these processes are impacted by the work being stopped.

The suppression of creativity has long been used as a tactic to erase a culture and community during times of war, but artists have always managed to find ways to keep their creativity alive despite the risks and barriers that can make it nearly impossible to do so. Today, these stories of resistance, craft and tradition are testimonies to the strength of a people and a culture. But they are not isolated in this struggle, as Annelys de Wet states, “It’s not just talking about the Palestinians, but understanding how these struggles for humanity, for culture, for a relationship to a place to history to heritage, how important it is for all of us. It is a shared struggle.”

@ibrahim_muhtadi

Disarming Design

Sidreh Organization 

BCXSY

@Shop_Kunuz

Bethlehem Fair Trade

Kissweh