A State for Lovers Will Be Built, Palestine, 1985

NAJI AL ALI (1938—1987)

Translated: “From our stones, a state for lovers will be built”

From a poem by Mahmoud Darwish

Al Ali is a political cartoonist, writer, journalist, and popular figure of Palestinian struggle. Born in al-Shajara in 1938, al Ali lived throughout occupied Palestine, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the United Kingdom. First published by Ghassan Kanafani, al Ali worked for various newspapers with Arab Nationalist leanings. In 1987 al Ali was murdered by Zionist intelligence forces in London—an attempt to silence an artist whose cartoons unified the popular struggle for liberation.

Here, in a poster for the PLO, al Ali’s most famous character, Handala, reaches to pull a stone from the ground while the text quotes a Mahmoud Darwish poem. Handala is a 10 year old boy representing the age the artist left his homeland. Perpetually young, Handala is normally depicted with his hands behind his back awaiting return, but in A State for Lovers, al Ali shows him taking action. The bloodied adult hand and stone implies a cycle of resistance rooted in childhood and the lone daisy is a romantic symbol of hope born from struggle.

poster: https://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/a-state-for-lovers-will-be-built 

citations: https://www.palquest.org/en/biography/14303/naji-al-ali