A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali [Illustrated] 1844673650, 9781844673650

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A Child in Palestine The Cartoons of

Naji al-Ali With an introduction by JOE SACCO

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With thanks and heartfelt gratitude to Mr Abdul Hadi Ayyad for his excellent introductions to the chapters, and Dr Mahmoud al-Hindi for his perceptive cartoon captions; Mr Mohammed al-Asaad and Mr Hani al-Haddad for their invaluable assistance in all aspects of the book from its inception, including selection of the cartoons themselves. I am also indebted to Mr Hani Mazhar for his insights into the artistic aspects of the book and cartoon selection; Mr Faisal Ben Khadra for editing the introductions to the chapters; and Mr Elias Nasrallah for his thoughtful comments on the project as a whole. Khalid al-Ali March2009

A CHILD IN PALESTINE

The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali

Introduction by Joe Sacco

VERSO

London • New York

The images reproduced in this book were first published in the following newspapers: as-Sa.fir, Lebanon (pp. 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 14, 25, 29, 30, 36, 37, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56, 62, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 99, 100, 110, 113, 116, 117); al-Watan, Kuwait (pp. 42, 49, 51, 91); al-Qabas, Kuwait (pp. 7, 9, 10, 15, 16, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 50, 52, 58, 84, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 101, 103, 115}; al-Qabas International, UK (pp. 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 57, 59, 90, 95, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 11 l, 112, 114); al-Seyassah, Kuwait (pp. 17, 21, 26, 60, 61, 64, 65, 69, 70); al-Sheraa, Lebanon (pp. 63, 83, 102} Cover image first published in as-Sa.fir, July 1980 Images and captions © Estate of Naji al-Ali Introduction © Joe Sacco Accompanying texts © Abdul Hadi Ayyad This collection published by Verso 2009 ©Verso2009 All rights reserved The moral rights of the author have been asserted 3579108642

Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London WlF 0EG US: 388 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217 www.versobooks.com

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-365-0

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh Printed in the US

CONTENTS

ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE

Introduction

vii

Palestine Human Rights US Dominance, Oil and Arab Collusion The Peace Process Resistance

23 43 67 97

INTRODUCTION

JOE SACCO

I owe a debt to Naji al-Ali, that most renowned of Palestinian cartoonists, who was assassinated in London a few years before I first heard of him. When I made my initial trip to the Occupied Territories in the early 1990s to gather material for what would become the comic-book series Palestine, I was more than a little reluctant to tell my Palestinian hosts that I would be depicting their stories in drawings, as cartoons. Would they think I intended to trivialize their oppression? I needn't have worried. Upon blurting out my approach, a smile of understanding usually creased their faces. Of course! We had our own cartoanist! Naji al-Ali! And little by little, by such encounters, I began to recognize that my way had been well paved by this man, al-Ali. He was talked about with deep respect bordering on reverence. He criticized everyone, I was told, Israelis, the PLO, Arab regimes. No ane knows who killed him. Everyone had reason. I was introduced to his iconic character Hanthala, the obviously destitute but upright Palestinian child, always with his back to the viewer, looking on at some scene of Israeli cruelty or Arab hypocrisy. Hanthala represents the Palestinian people. He is us. I began to notice images of Hanthala everywhere, tacked up on walls or worn as ladies' jewelry. And on one occasion, in a cinderblock home of a refugee, someone pointed to a framed portrait on the wall. Hanthala's father, the man himself, Naji al-Ali. He was born in the Galilee in the village of al-Shajara in 1936 or 1937, and expelled, together with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, in the 1948 war that created Israel. His family settled in the Ain al-Helweh refugee camp

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in southern Lebanon. Dispossessed, growing up amidst the squalor and hardship that has been the lot of so many exiled Palestinians ever since, he quickly became politically conscious. He later said, '.As soon as I was aware of what was going on, all the havoc in our region, I felt I had to do something to contribute somehow.' He vented his frustration in marches and demonstrations that sometimes landed him in jail. It was in those periods behind bars, on the walls of his cells, that he experimented with a means of self-expression more suited to his artistic sensibility: political drawings. He started embellishing the walls of his refugee camp in the same way. Encouraged by others in these artistic endeavours, he spent a short time attending the Lebanese Art Institute until he ran out of funds. Like many other talented Palestinians with few outlets in the early 1960s, he emigrated to newly independent Kuwait, which was in the midst of an oil boom. He stayed there doing various magazine jobs until the early 1970s. It was in Kuwait, as he felt he was 'slipping into the life of luxury', that he first doodled Hanthala, who, in al-Ali's own words, 'represented the honest Palestinian who will always be on people's minds.' The very idea of creating a character that would epitomize the poorest, most powerless Palestinian, must have sobered al-Ali, who saw Hanthala as a separate moral entity 'that stands to watch me from slipping.' Back in Lebanon, drawing for the newspaper As-Sa.fir, Naji al-Ali placed Hanthala in the foreground of his cartoons, gazing at not just scenes of Israeli oppression and violence but also of Arab corruption and inequality. Everyone who ran roughshod over the Middle East's downtrodden was al-Ali's target. As he saw it, 'My job was to speak up for the people, my people who are in the camps, in Egypt, in Algeria, the simple Arabs all over the region who have very few outlets to express their points of view.' His slashing attacks were always politically insightful, but it was Hanthala that made them personally meaningful for al-Ali's many readers. '[Hanthala] is actually ugly;' admitted al-Ali, 'and no woman would wish to have a child like him.' Perhaps it was for that reason that Hanthala was affectionately embraced as a symbol by the poorest Palestinians; he reminded them of themselves - impoverished, unwanted, the orphans of the Middle East. But Hanthala was something else, too - he was knowing. It is the silent stance that must have delighted Hanthala's admirers. His arms are not by his side as in surprise or shock. They are behind his back, hands together, as if inspecting. Hanthala's stance says, Don't mind me. I'm off to the side. Watching. Recording. And I know exactly what you are doing.

INTRODUCTION

In Lebanon in the '70s, during the civil war and under Israeli attack, al-Ali felt he was at his zenith. 'I stood facing it all with my pen every day. I never felt fear, failure or despair, I didn't surrender ... My work in Beirut made me once again closer to the refugees in the camps, the poor, and the harassed.' But in 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon, seeking to crush the PLO once and for all. Hundreds of Palestinian refugees were massacred by Israel's Lebanese Christian allies in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut while the Israeli army sealed off the area. Al-Ali was devastated. He made his way back to Kuwait. In some of his cartoons, Hanthala lost his cool. He raised his hands in anger. He threw stones. Al-Ali's work had ruffled the feathers of Arab elites for a long time. He was expelled from Kuwait and moved to London. By now al-Ali was famous. His cartoons appeared throughout the Arab world, and in London. He continued battering at the oppressors and the privileged of the Middle East despite death threats. On July 22, 1987, he was shot in the head by a lone assailant as he was walking into the London offices of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas. He lay in a coma for five weeks and then died. He was about fifty years old. The identity of the killer has never been determined. Naji al-Ali remains a hero in the Arab world, in particular to the Palestinians, who say his name with the same tenderness with which they mention their great poets. His iconic figure, Hanthala, remains a potent Palestinian symbol and will for a long time to come. Unfortunately; with the Middle East's twin taps of violence and despair still open, there is all too much for Hanthala to see. Joe Sacco January 2009

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I PALESTINE 'Naji al-Ali's works were like a compass which always pointed towards Truth; and that truth will always be Palestine.' With these words Ahmad Matar, the Iraqi poet and long-standing friend of Naji al-Ali, described al-Ali's significance to his Arab readership. Those not aware of what was done to the indigenous people of Palestine during the first half of the twentieth century will perhaps find it impossible to understand not only Naji al-Ali's cartoons, but the entire Middle East situation as it stands today. From the end of the nineteenth century, the nascent Zionist movement sought to establish throughout historical Palestine an exclusively Jewish state, completely disregarding the Palestinian people's inalienable rights to their homeland. What was to become the State of Israel established both a system of centralized economic planning which deprived the native Palestinians of land, resources and economic opportunity, and total cultural control of the country. This culminated in a string of terrifying attacks on Palestinian towns, and a mass expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian population, by a Zionist settler project that was by that time highly militarily advanced. But the Palestinians who were forced out of their country, becoming refugees, found no respite and no new place to call home. Instead, the Palestinian community, which had by 1948 - the end of the British Mandate and the beginning of Israel - established a vibrant and complex society, were forced to pick up the pieces of their lives from refugee camps in neighbouring countries administered by the United Nations - the selfsame body which had provided for the establishment of Israel. Having left Palestine as young children, Naji and his compatriots of the time remembered just enough of the country to make it real to their senses - recollections

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of the fragrance of citrus trees, visions of stone houses and farmers' fields. Palestine was not for them, as it would become for later generations of displaced Palestinians, a homeland of collective memory. Yet for al-Ali, as for the others, having been forced out as a child meant that his experience of the Palestinian Nakba or •disaster' of 1948 was chiselled into his mind in the simplest, starkest way possible. As al-Ali repeatedly emphasized, this is the very reason why Hanthala was always depicted as an eleven-year-old boy; it is also clearly the reason for the poignant moral clarity of al-Ali's work. To follow al-Ali's daily cartoons was to be invited to see the world through the eyes of a rebellious young Palestinian refugee. With their great moral clarity, his drawings were never meant to make others comfortable. Instead, they were meant to never be anything less than a direct, truthful chronicle of the suffering of Palestinian refugees. After enduring the often draconian restrictions imposed upon them in various Arab countries after 1948, the Palestinian refugees watched from afar as the rest of their country was swallowed up by Israel in 1967. While the Zionist entity continued to construct illegal colonies on occupied Palestinian lands, the regimes of neighbouring Arab states failed either to offer the Palestinian refugees a decent temporary shelter, or to act as sincere supporters for the Palestinian cause. In the midst of all this, Hanthala stands as a perennially unchanging observer. While surprisingly malleable principles of international law made progressively fewer demands on behalf of the Palestinians, Hanthala never once forgot the child's Palestine. As al-Ali makes clear, Hanthala was never allowed to grow old, because to permit him to do so would be to normalize the predicament of refugees. To borrow from a story common to Palestinian refugees of al-Ali's generation, they should not be allowed to pick oranges from trees that are not theirs. The cartoons in this chapter share more than just the clear, unflinching vision of a child. In different ways, they also represent an innocent and unshakeable statement of the Palestinians' refusal to disappear, and their insistence on chronicling and writing their own history.

PALESTINE

When they were expelled by Israel in 1948, the Palestinians kept the keys to their homes. Here, Hanthala dreams of his homeland; the keys, snagged on barbed wire, signify Israel's denial of the Palestinian right of return (January 1974)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Jesus is a Palestinian, says Naji al-Ali; like all the Palestinian people, he too dreams of returning to his home in Bethlehem (April 1982)

PALESTINE

One day the barbed wire, fencing the Palestinians out of their homeland, will be transformed, and the suffering of the Palestinian people will end (March 1981)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

A mother's tears heal her child, mutilated in an Israeli raid (July 1981)

PALESTINE

Al-Ali parallels the suffering of Palestinians and the trials of Christ, with a modern Palestinian take on the Madonna and Child theme. The addition of a crescent moon signifies the equal suffering of Palestinian Christians and Muslims (December 1984)

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The victims of an Israeli raid rise to resist their enemy and defend their rights (July 1982)

PALESTINE

Although barbed wire represents the harsh present for a tearful Palestinian woman, she clings onto hope nonetheless (January 1987)

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A Palestinian girl's brajds, pinned to the cross, signify the endless suffering of Palestinian refugees (undated)

PALESTINE

Films come to an end, but the reality of Palestinian suffering is ever present (July 1980)

11

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e (July 1986) ultim ately lead them to prisons-in-exil Visas gran ted to Palestinian refug ees

PALESTINE

Estrangement, homesickness, alienation ... The cemetery of the Palestinian diaspora (July 1986)

13

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Illegal Israeli settlements and misappropriation of Palestinian land. Protecting his young plant (livelihood), a Palestinian farmer is uprooted by an Israeli bulldozer (November 1980)

PALESTINE

s of the US flag and UN resolu tion 242, The united Arab 'footba ll team', wearin g the colour 1983) mber attemp t to score in a bricked-up Israeli goal (Septe

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The Palestinian leadership proclaims victory through the media; meanwhile, in a prescient foreshadowing of the Separation Wall, Israel continues to appropriate Palestinian land and build illegal settlements Oanuary 1984)

PALESTINE

No entry to the negotiation room: illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands seal the fate of the peace talks (December 1978)

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lN (()

(Right to left) 'International Peace Conference in progress': meanwhile, illegal appropriation of land and building of settlements continue unchecked, creating Israeli 'facts on the ground' (March 1987)

PALESTINE

A political prisoner on hunger strike is consoled by a hoopoe bird, the symbol of freedom, under the watchful eye of an Israeli prison guard (April 1987)

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Palestinian peasants plough their Israeli-occupied land with an AK-47, sowing it with heart-shaped seeds to symbolize their devotion, belonging, and resistance (April 1987)

PALESTINE

We shall return: a Palestinian child dons his father's combat boots to continue the struggle (December 1978)

21

2 HUMAN RIGHTS Without the possibility of returning to their former homeland, Palestinian refugees now scattered throughout the surrounding countries and beyond, Naji al-Ali among them, could see parallels between their plight and that of the surrounding populations. In a region where the media are tightly policed, sectarianism and discrimination against women rampant, and the working class prevented from free organization, being a Palestinian was one other cause amongst many for a person to be oppressed. Many enemies of the Palestinian cause point to these long-standing shortcomings in Arab societies, suggesting that any Palestinian state would be rife with the same problems. Naji al-Ali stood as a counter-example to this line of thinking; as well as being a Palestinian patriot, he was passionately involved in portraying the unending suffering of the masses around him. The Kafkaesque predicaments of political prisoners in the Arab world, capital punishment, and the abject poverty of the vast majority of Arabs in close proximity to the oil wealth of the Gulf: all these themes were subjected to Naji al-Ali's razor-sharp pen. Al-Ali was rare among political partisans in the Arab world. He possessed unyielding dedication to political ideals without being a functionary of any specific political organization, although he had been a known supporter of the Pan-Arabist cause since the early 1950s. In a region marked by governmental control over the printed press, al-Ali dared to direct his criticism where it was due. His work clearly showed how Arab governments and the upper echelons of Arab societies, in cahoots with theocrats peddling medieval penal codes and the ever-interfering US, all colluded directly and indirectly to produce the dire human rights situation in Arab countries. What makes Naji al-Ali's drawings truly remarkable is their timelessness: their relevance seems, if anything, to have increased rather than faded with time. This was

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due in large part to his extraordinary ability to convey in pen and ink the complex spectrum of problems afflicting the Arabs, whilst remaining steadfast in his determination to the Palestinian cause. Fully attuned to these demands and causes, al-Ali used his art to mobilize the Arab public around them. While political cartoons are clearly not weapons of war, al-Ali's drawings make abundantly clear the urgent need to achieve radical change in the Middle East through various different kinds of resistance. The enormously rich and complex nature of Middle Eastern life also bubbles up through al-Ali's cartoons, posing some unsettling questions for the reader. Where do the limits of engagement lie? How far can the poor go when they are pushed? What claims can poor Arabs make on the mineral wealth buried under Arab ground? How is national liberation achieved when the nation striving for freedom deprives vast numbers of its people of basic human rights? However vague and indefinite these questions might be in the minds of many, Hanthala proudly declares that he is prepared to grasp his Kalashnikov to find the answers.

HUMAN RIGHTS

The nameless, faceless Arab masses are criminalized by their own regimes - their only crime being their demand for basic human rights (July 1980)

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Hanthala sees what the ruling elites in the Arab world mean when they talk of 'democratic dialogue'; the common man has been silenced by his political rulers in the crudest way possible (December 1976)

HUMAN RIGHTS

Condemnation of capital punishment: a hoopoe bird weeps as it pecks away at the gallows, bringing them down (January 1985)

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Condemnation of amputation as punishment for theft: sharia law is still present in some countries of the region (July 1985)

HUMAN RIGHTS

WANTED!!

Arab citizens demanding their rights are a threat in the eyes of the powerful (September 1980)

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lB -· ~

Writing on the wall: Naji demands freedom for all political detainees in prisons in Israel and the Arab World (December 1979)

HUMAN RIGHTS

/

I

I

News headlines declare 'democratic dialogue'; the common Arab man watches incredulously as his government slumbers behind a prominently displayed 'Do Not Disturb' sign (November 1984)

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\):Cl .. ,

(Right to left) Yesterday, today, tomorrow: women's rights are stifled by conservative Arab elites (January 1985)

HUMAN RIGHTS

Hanthala stands on the divide between seated veiled and unveiled Arab women as they eye each other suspiciously (undated)

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Ruling elites of the Arab world feast, stabbing the poor who dare to claim their fair share (January 1984)

HUMAN RIGHTS

Live Aid? Hanthala looks on as US relief delivered to famine victims in Ethiopia is traded for political influence and dominance in the region (November 1984)

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'The Last Supper': hunger and lack of freedom for the crucified Arab masses (April 1980)

HUMAN RIGHTS

Arab Rulers from the Gulf, the Levant and North Africa (with hood) heap crosses on the back of the heavily burdened Arab common man (April 1982)

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Hanthala and his family live in the signposted Ain al-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. An old newspaper is headlined 'The Role of Oil in the Conflict'; meanwhile, from the massive profits of oil, all refugees have are cast-off oil drums, under which they shelter (May 1984)

HUMAN RIGHTS

Although many in the West see oil as a source of political influence for the Arab states, in reality oil politics shackles the Arab poor (October 1984)

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Aflluent, irresponsible fat cats of the Arab world flee the grinding reality of the refugee camps, symbolized here by the patches from refugees' worn-out clothing CTuly 1975)

HUMAN RIGHTS

Rulers of all they survey, Arab elites wonder in trepidation whether the endless, Sisyphean toils of the poor will ever overthrow them Oune 1975)

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Armed struggle is the way to eradicate hunger, thinks Hanthala (May 1981)

3 US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION The Palestinian Nakba coincided with the emergence of oil wealth in the wider Middle East. Newly exiled from their farms, villages and cities, many Palestinians strove to make new lives for themselves in the Arab states of the Gul£ Particularly in Kuwait - where local elites had been organizing support for the Palestinian movement since 1936 - these new Palestinian emigres, as well as playing a major constructional role in a strategically important part of the world, contributed to the political radicalization of a generation of Arabs. It was into this setting that Naji al-Ali walked when he moved to Kuwait in 1963 to work for the radical Kuwaiti weekly al-Taleea (The Vanguard), although his ties to Lebanon and the Palestinians living there, especially in the Ain al-Helweh refugee camp near Sidon, would see him move back and forth between the two countries for several years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Kuwait was becoming increasingly important to US interests, and its society more consumerist, while at the same time being a hotbed of support for the revolutionary Palestinian movements of the day. It was perhaps his direct experience of Kuwait that helped Naji to develop a clearer and wider vision of the situation of the Arab world, and specifically the role of oil in shaping the region's future. For a growing number of Arabs at that time, oil was not the economic blessing it might have seemed to be in previous decades. While many of the world's oil reserves were located in the Arab states of the Gulf region, the industrial economies whose demand for oil gave the commodity its value were not a part of the Arab landscape. What the Arabs in centuries past called napht might come out of the ground in Arab countries - but its production, demand, pricing and, ultimately, control

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were determined by Western governments and multinational Western corporations. Even after the bitter efforts towards nationalization were won, institutional reliance on Western technology, capital and, in some cases, even workforces are clearly visible throughout the region. For al-Ali, what made a bad situation worse was the way in which it combined a voracious appetite for Arab mineral resources with other interests in the region. These interests, in al-Ali's view, were made manifest in unconditional Western military and diplomatic support for Israel, to the detriment of her Arab neighbours. When one considers that the modem-day boundaries between Middle Eastern nation-states were, in an act of imperial hubris, drawn up by a pair of English and French bureaucrats in the aftermath of the First World War, it is easy to understand why Western powers have been constantly opposed to any form of unity in the region brought about by independent nationalist dynamism. It also becomes possible to see why throughout the Arab world people could detect US-led interference wherever it occurred, and had a ready vocabulary at hand to describe it. In a sense, time has only served to underscore the significance of al-Ali's cartoons, as the reality of US imperialist ambitions, now no longer pitted against a Cold War foe in the region, are laid bare. The cartoons in this chapter are remarkable for their ability to articulate with great clarity what millions were only able to conceive of in the vaguest terms. Here we see again al-Ali's independence of spirit. He never bowed to the dictates of any political institution, and was never deceived by the suggestion that the US was fanning the flames of the catastrophic 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war in defence of the Arab nation. Naji al-Ali understood that the US was trying to control the region, and why. Together with Hanthala, Naji al-Ali invites us to watch as an Arab leader, befuddled, tries to follow which way the wind blows through the Stars and Stripes. Not being able to change the dynamics of the world trade in oil, we can all at least be honest witnesses to the way in which Arab ruling elites have bartered their countries' sovereignty and resources in exchange for Western protection of their regimes.

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

Arab oil finds its way into Israeli warplanes: oil politics is a noose around the possibility of progressive change (June 1981)

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And the awards for control of Arab oil wealth go to . .. the US, closely followed by France and the UK (February 1980)

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

Gulf oil sheikhs think their barrels of crude will keep them afloat - but their oil pact with the US will ultimately sink them (March 1975)

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Hanthala is resolute in the face of a combined bombardment: Arab swords, Arab oil and Israeli munitions (August 1982)

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

As regional conflict (the Iran-Iraq war) rages, oil power drains away to the US; Israel, meanwhile, dominates the horizon.

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The drums of war: huddling together, the Arab street reads about the Iran-Iraq War - it is clear who is beating the drums (August 1984)

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

3

2

1

When Uncle Sam sees the Middle East (Iraq-Iran War) burning, he uses his umbrella to ensure that rain doesn't put the fires out (October 1980)

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US intervention and influence leads to the destruction of Arab land. Here, Naji shows how the US was the main beneficiary of the Iran-Iraq war (undated)

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

A deadly embrace : the US deploys its navy in the Gulf under the pretext of protecting Arab security (February I 982)

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The destruction of Iran and Iraq by US-made missiles and policy: only the US survives unscathed. At the time, al-Ali's sceptical view of the Iran-Iraq War was practically unique in Kuwait, where he was working (October 1980)

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

Intertwined, the US and Israeli war machines exercise control through violence (August 1981)

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Dropping anchor: a US presence in the Middle East - embodied by its ubiquitous warships destroys the chance of a just peace in the Arab world (July 1980)

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

The US controls the rhetoric of the Arab world's rulers, telling them when they can or cannot speak (November 1985)

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'Moderate Arab leaders', as the West likes to describe them, often say that the US 'has the keys' to the Middle East's problems. Hanthala can see quite clearly how the US plans to open those doors (undated)

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

In bed with Ronnie: Ronald Reagan hauls more of the world towards the US, from the despairing grasp of a destitute Mikhail Gorbachev (October 1986)

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---

____./

The stripes of the American flag incapacitate and throttle the downtrodden Arab (May 1971)

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

The shadow cast by Arab ruling elites is prostrated in obedience to the White House (February 1973)

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Arab leaders gather to see what shapes Uncle Sam will draw with his compass - and watch in wonder as the State of Israel is planted in their midst. The region's current borders were drawn by colonial mandarins (March 1980)

US DOMINANCE , OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

Blowing in the wind: try as they might, Arab elites can't fathom US policy on the Middle East (March 1983)

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Arab elites believe they hold the key to the White House - but it has many keys (August 1978)

US DOMINANCE, OIL AND ARAB COLLUSION

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:~;5:C~\~~ :.~Ji\/·'' ..,_ ..

While the incompetent, obese Arab leadership remoulds the region in the shape of its own fantasy, in the shade of an American umbrella, Hanthala can see that it is in fact the US which has consummated with this make-believe bride (June 1978)

4 THE PEACE PROCESS & with so much of Naji al-Ali's work, his cartoons on the never-ending attempts to placate the Middle East's volatility seem only to gain validity and power with the passage of time. After an increasing number of Palestinian politicians within the PLO took for themselves the right to speak on behalf of their people, and then surrendered more and more of their people's rights, Naji al-Ali remained steadfastly attached to the Palestine he grew up in. He remained true to his understanding that there could be no peace without a resolution of the fundamental issue at stake: that of the Palestinian refugees and their inalienable right to return to the land from which they were displaced. Displaying a political acumen rare for an artist, al-Ali understood fully that the great and powerful of the world could hardly be relied upon to uphold the rights of the Palestinians. Strikingly, he also clearly saw, as the cartoons in this chapter clearly show, the very duplicitous personal role played by Henry Kissinger in the politics of the region. In relation to the wider Arab world, too, al-Ali was prophetic. He did not believe that the Arab states, with their newly acquired oil wealth, and their allies would be able to secure a peace deal for the Palestinians. In a sense, the actions of Israel and the complicity of the Egyptian regime served to corroborate al-Ali's view. After signing a 'peace' treaty with Egypt, with assistance from the US, Israel launched an invasion of southern Lebanon in 1978. 1bis was followed in 1982 by a further invasion all the way to Lebanon's capital Beirut, inflicting terrible atrocities on Palestinians and Lebanese alike in the process. Where once Egypt might have been expected to defend the rights of dispossessed Palestinian refugees, what was formerly the Arabs' leading state abandoned its commitment to the people of Palestine and Lebanon. Israel was, in other words, attempting to establish peace through violence, trying to ensure the docility of the Palestinians, who were inconvenient to

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her existence. Eager to secure the US' s backing, Arab rulers were content to remain silent; lacking statesmanlike imagination and courage, they were played like a fiddle by the Israelis. This might have been understandable within the context of international agreements between supposedly sovereign states. Yet to countless others throughout the region, the Arab leaders' silence was tantamount to complicity: in doing nothing, they were effectively accomplices to the crime. It was this innate and widespread sense of justice to which al-Ali subscribed and, given the inability or unwillingness of Arab leaders to take up their cause, on which refugees like Hanthala relied. Nevertheless, out of the Palestinians' darkest hour came new possibilities. In December 1973 a peace process in Geneva from which the Palestinians were excluded failed to decapitate the PLO as the legitimate leadership of the Palestinians, nor did it silence the Palestinians' demands for justice in their homeland. In the face of overwhelming force, PLO fedayeen managed to withhold an Israeli onslaught on Beirut. Even when, in September 1982, the fighters of the armed resistance were evacuated to remote Arab countries, the Palestinian national movement did not end - as many had wanted and expected. Instead of a pliant and defeated Palestinian people prostrating itself before Israel, the masses of people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip led the 1987 Palestinian intifada and emphatically put paid to the idea that the Palestinians were going to go away.

THE PEACE PROCESS

A Palestinian guerrilla rushes to the aid of the myriad Arab governments playing tug-of-war with Israel, only to find them having capitulated - and himself left holding the rope Oanuary 1970)

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THE PEACE PROCESS

Henry Kissinger returns from his shuttle diplomacy to the Arab world after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, having vanquished the oil embargo (October 1974)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Roll out the barrel: Kissinger tempts the Arabs along with false hopes of peace; the oil sheikhs are only too happy to welcome American influence in the region (February 1975)

THE PEACE PROCESS

Kissinger the magician conjures from his hat a black owl (in the Arab world, a bad omen) gripping the olive branch in its beak (March 1975)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Peace built on surrender. The dove of peace nests in a helmet resting atop an abandoned rifle (March 1976)

THE PEACE PROCESS

As the Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat sits at the Camp David negotiating table in 1978, Israel surreptitiously milks the Palestinian people of their rights (February 1979)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

'Self Rule' for the Palestinians Uanuary 1980)

THE PEACE PROCESS

While millions of ordinary Arabs struggle to stay afloat, rulers of the Arab oil sheikdoms fantasize about a life of excess (February 1975)

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-- - -- -

The Devil pre-empts his ritualistic annual stoning during the Hajj pilgrimage, with a direct hit on an Arab fat cat. Hanthala, in Hajj attire, rejoices (December 1974)

THE PEACE PROCESS

Last post: Hanthala weeps as he sounds the bugle to commemorate Muslim and Christian martyrs of the Lebanese civil war (March 1976)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

South Lebanese refugees join the exodus from their land after its destruction by the Israeli war machine (April 1974)

THE PEACE PROCESS

Hanthala remains defiant and unscathed as Israeli bombers obliterate any struggling hopes of peace (July 1982)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Invading Lebanon in 'Operation Peace for Galilee', Israel has murdered peace. Death, in the form of ravens, spreads across the untended land (April 1983)

THE PEACE PROCESS

Amidst the ruins of Lebanon, following the 1982 Israeli invasion, new leaves sprout around Hanthala as he turns to face the reader, solemnly waving the Palestinian and Lebanese flags (July 1982)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

As PLO fighters are expelled from Beirut in September 1982, in the opposite direction swims a

body-shaped school of fish, bearing a key - the symbol of the Palestinian right of return (December 1983)

THE PEACE PROCESS

lbe Israelis may occupy Lebanon for now but, Hanthala knows, the Lebanese will regain their sovereignty (July 1982)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Lebanon may be a fractured puzzle of allegiances and alliances, but it has no place for Israel in its midst (March 1983)

THE PEACE PROCESS

During the Sabra and Shatila massacres, female victims were subject to horrific abuses. Here, Hanthala restores dignity to the dead with his Palestinian kufiyeh, or headscarf (May 1983)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Orphans comfort each other at the Sabra and Shatila cemetery (June 1985)

THE PEACE PROCESS

Upside down, back to front: rulers of the Arab world argue over who best represents US interests in the region. None of them knows anything - they can't even hold the US flag the right way (October 1984)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

The metaphor of one person playing another 'like a fiddle' or other instrument is a human universal. Hanthala stands in the audience as Israel uses hapless, misshapen Arab leaders for its percussion orchestra (March 1985)

THE PEACE PROCESS

Israel smugly awaits a challenger in the ring, but its opponents, Arab leaders, are too busy fighting among themselves. Pointedly, this cartoon does not articulate the widespread Arab belief that these disputes are an external conspiracy - merely that Israel is the beneficiary of them (April 1980)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

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sir

Sycophantic Palestinian operatives and Arab rulers, who claim undying loyalty to 'Yes sir' Arafat, are in fact submitting to Israel (undated)

THE PEACE PROCESS

Yasir Arafat's trademark 'V for Victory' sign hides the reality of capitulation Oanuary 1984)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

An adaptation of the Romulus and Remus myth shows the Egyptian regime's connivance in Palestine's destruction. The US wolf, straddling the Pyramids, devours the Palestinian twin while the Israeli twin suckles on her pyramid teats (January 1985)

THE PEACE PROCESS

Give them enough rope: For Arab rulers, UN resolutions and peace negotiations are safety parachutes - too late, they find out that these escape clauses are hangman's nooses (November 1985)

95

5 RESISTANCE Like other artists working not only for personal reasons, but as a means towards the raising of consciousness and national liberation, Naji al-Ali brought a real clarity of purpose to his work. Palestinian resistance to the Zionists had from the very beginning took artistic and aesthetic forms. Having been defeated by an enemy which had always enjoyed Western-sponsored military superiority, the Palestinians' need for a visual culture was very sorely felt from the very first days of the Nakba. Perhaps more than any other Palestinian visual art, al-Ali's drawings quickly became a byword for the Palestinian movement within the wider Arab world. Dealing with the realities of Palestinian refugees and carried through daily newspapers, al-Ali's work was able to move beyond the literary salons and into the public consciousness. The need for Hanthala became particularly apparent as the first generation of Palestinians born as refugees came into the world. If the process of retrieving historic Palestine, from the River to the Sea, was to turn into a multi-generational struggle, then the ever-vigilant young needed to be relied on to carry the flame. In this sense, al-Ali's work was an extension of the work carried out by Palestinian artists of previous generations, whose efforts had begun to take a more 'modern' approach from the 1950s onward. Al-Ali's life was cut short just months before the explosion of Palestinian anger into an organized intifada, whose clearly youthful dimension was evident in the 'children of the stone-throwing revolt' who appeared on television screens around the world. Throughout the Arab world, the image of Hanthala became intertwined with these Atfal Hijara, as the youthful revolutionaries came to be known. The December 1987 uprising in Occupied Palestine had been foreshadowed by several smaller uprisings throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian territories usurped in

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

1948, which al-Ali had traced and depicted in his daily cartoons. Throughout the 1980s, Hanthala, who had become aware of his role in history in the refugee camps of Lebanon, would emerge in the whole of Palestine and among Arab readers everywhere. Importantly; this was not just a one-way process. It was not simply a case of Hanthala being imposed onto the landscape of the Palestinian struggle from the offices of a foreign newspaper; thanks to the networks of exiled Palestinians stretching through Jordan, the Gulf and beyond, Hanthala had already become a familiar figure amongst the Palestinians of Occupied Palestine itself. There, the uprising was already developing an aesthetic of its own, with Palestinians using graffiti and dance classes of dabke as a means of cultural resistance. The driving force of this latest Palestinian uprising had sprung from refugee camps not unlike Hanthala's own in Lebanon, and, as with Palestinian communities everywhere, the fight for resistance was two-pronged, against not only Israeli organized aggression, but also against fraudulent, corrupt and duplicitous Arab leaders, who were only too willing to bask in the glory of stone-throwing children. Indeed, it is in this chapter that all the previous strands of al-Ali's cartoons truly come together. Here, the struggle is not only fought by moustachioed men, but by strong, liberated women who use their tears for ammunition; not only do we see the naked aggression of Israel, but the need for the Arabs to change their own leaders. These words are written shortly after the latest round of Israeli aggression - and official Arab complacency - against the Palestinians, specifically those of Gaza, in January 2009; what they aim to stress is that Hanthala's voice of total nonsurrender, resonant for many years in the refugee camps within historical Palestine and other countries, remains as necessary today as it was when these cartoons were first drawn.

RESISTANCE

Commitment to the homeland means bleeding for it. Barbed wire rnts into the hand of a Palestinian freedom fighter as he steadfastly digs the soil of his land (April 1980)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

A dying freedom fighter digs his fingers into his parched homeland; his blood waters it (November 1980)

RESISTANCE

The tears of a grieving woman turn into bombs of resistance (undated)

IOI

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Waving a Palestinian flag, Hanthala kicks over an Israeli oildrum filled with the white flags of Arab capitulation (May 1982)

RESISTANCE

The dangerous currents of capitulation drag away a freedom fighter clinging to the shore of his beloved homeland (October 1983)

I 03

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

The proud, steadfast march of the Palestinian would surely secure the realisation of his goals of freedom, return, and justice (July 1986)

RESISTANCE

Checkmate: the poor Palestinian plays chess against the Arab politician, who is helpless in front of the irrefutable case for Palestinian resistance (January 1985)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Arab ruling elites express their allegiance to the US; the Arab street expresses its concern and love for Palestine (October 1984)

RESISTANCE

Expedient Arab social and political elites are quick to capitalize on the gains made by the Palestinian armed resistance - and equally quick to abandon it to its fate when the time is right (July 1983)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

In a nod to the biblical story of Salome, the severed, kufiyeh-clad head of a freedom fighter on a platter, balanced on the head of a belly dancer, is served to a gleeful Israeli (September 1983)

RESISTANCE

A Palestinian guerrilla wears his checked kufiyeh as a sign of resistance; Arab elites, heading off to do business with the West, use the same pattern as a fashion statement (April 1984)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Stabbed in the back: in order to make peace with the Israelis, rulers of the Arab oil countries betray Palestinian freedom fighters (August 1981)

RESISTANCE

It worked for William Tell: an Arab ruler tells Hanthala, embodying the Palestinian people, that he can trust his archery skills. The ruler deliberately misses, shooting Hanthala in the heart, then watches him die while munching his prized apple. This cartoon was drawn a few months before al-Ali's assassination (April 1987)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

'The Intifada of the West Bank and Gaza ': Christ, the symbol of endless suffering, strikes back against the Israeli occupier (December 1986)

RESISTANCE

Long-suffering Palestinian mothers show their support for the children of the Intifada (turning barbed wire into spring flowers). Al-Ali prophesied the Intifada years before it took place (March 1982)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Palestinian children throw rocks at the Israeli road-roller (a symbol of continued land-appropriation confiscation and illegal senlement-building); Arab rulers cower behind it while pushing it forward (February 1987)

RESISTANCE

Both woman and girl, deeply rooted in the land to which they belong, drive away the Israeli soldier and the deformed Arab elites (March 1984)

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A CHILD IN PALESTINE

Jesus Christ, on the cross, throws a stone in support of the intifada (April 1982)

RESISTANCE

In a desolate landscape, a defiant hand carrying the Palestinian flag bursts through the rocky ground, signifying a new spring (March 1982)

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NAJI AL-ALI

Naji al-Ali (1936-1987) was born in al-Jalil (Galilee), Palestine, in the village of al-Shajara. When the Nakba (catastrophe) struck in 1948, al-Ali became a refugee, along with the vast majority of Palestinians, growing up in the south Lebanese refugee camp of Ain al-Helweh. In 1961, Palestinian writer and political activist Ghassan Kanafani noted the creative artistry of al-Ali and published three of his works in al-Hurriyya magazine. Two years later, al-Ali moved to Kuwait, where he drew for a variety of newspapers over the next eleven years; in 1969, his most celebrated creation, the witness-child Hanthala, appeared for the first time. Through the gaze of this refugee child with his ragged, patched clothes, al-Ali criticized the brutality of Israeli occupation, the venality and corruption of the regimes in the region, and emphasized the suffering and resistance of the Palestinian people. Resolutely independent and unaligned to any political party, he strove to speak to and for the ordinary Arab people; the pointed satire of his starlc, symbolic cartoons brought him widespread renown, many powerful enemies, and the respect of a wide audience both in Palestine and throughout the Arab world. In 1974, Naji returned to Lebanon, where he witnessed the civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion. Moving back to Kuwait Naji took up a post with the daily newspaper al-Qabas. Constantly harassed and censored by the authorities, Naji was finally expelled from the country; relocating to London, where he continued to draw for the international edition of al-Qabas. On 22 July 1987, he was shot outside the newspaper's Chelsea offices, dying five weeks later. He was posthumously awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom award of the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEJ). Naji al-Ali's cartoons remain as relevant and popular as ever. A Child in Palestine presents, for the first time in book form, the work of one of the Arab world's greatest cartoonists, revered throughout the region for his outspokenness, honesty and humanity.

Made in the USA Las Vegas, NV 22 October 2023

'Naji al-Ali remains a hero in the Arab world, in particular to the Palestinians, who say his name with the same tenderness with which they mention their great poets. His iconic figure, Hanthala, remains a potent Palestinian symbol and will for a long time to come. Unfortunately, with the Middle East's twin taps of violence and despair still open , there is all too much for Hanthala to see.' From the introduction by

This is a ground-breaking book. For the first time, Western readers are beckoned into Palestinian lives by the graphic warmth, inspiration and horror of the cartoonist Naji al-Ali, whose iconic child Hanthala is our witness and conscience, imploring , rightly, that we never forget. ' John Pilger

II "'' ISBN 978-1-84467-365-0

POLITICS "

www.versobooks.com

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$24.95/$33.95CAN

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