How watermelon became the symbol of Palestinian resistance

Symbolising resistance and solidarity has always been a second language. Influential people have always suppressed commoners' rights to speak up, but it could never stop. The world's most helpless nation, Palestinians, and other nations who are suppressed to speak straight are also expressing and talking about their rights, rights symbolising watermelon!

The story begins after the Six-Day War in 1967 when Israel seized control of the West Bank and Gaza and annexed East Jerusalem.

At the time, the Israeli government made public displays of the Palestinian flag a criminal, a move intended to suppress Palestinian national sentiment. However, the attempt to erase a person's identity often sparks creative acts of defiance.

Palestinians, determined to maintain their cultural identity, found a clever workaround: the watermelon. When sliced open, it presented the colours in a natural, undeniable form. The fruit became a stealthy symbol, a way to express national pride without explicitly waving the banned flag.  

Its vibrant red flesh, black seeds, white rind, and green skin mirror the colours of the Palestinian flag, making it a potent, albeit subtle, expression of national identity.

The symbolism was so effective that, as artist Sliman Mansour recounted, even the mere mention of the fruit became a target of censorship.

In 1980, Israeli officials shut down an art exhibition, warning artists that even a watermelon painting would be confiscated. The fear wasn't about the fruit itself but its message.

The ban on the Palestinian flag was lifted in 1993 as part of the Oslo Accords when international media acknowledged the watermelon's symbolic role.

The New York Times, for example, noted the irony of soldiers standing by as processions marched with the once-banned flag, a stark contrast to the days when young men were arrested for carrying sliced watermelons.

On July 23, 2023, in Jerusalem, demonstrators held demonstrators' hedges in the colours of the Palestinian flag with watermelon or the word freedom on them.

The protesters were holding these signs because the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, has forbidden the waving of Palestinian flags. A similar symbolic movement took place in this world, and one of these movements was the Sunflower Movement.

Hundreds of young people, primarily Taiwanese university students, stormed Taipei's national legislature. They gathered outside the government building to protest against the government's attempts to ram through a trade treaty between Taiwan and China that, according to the students, would put their homeland at further risk.

So, a seemingly innocuous fruit has ripened into a powerful emblem of Palestinian resilience. In the heart of a conflict fraught with symbolism, it became an expression of national identity.