A homeland on canvas: Sliman Mansour and the rise of revolutionary Palestinian art

The death of Palestinian artist Sliman Anis Mansour stirred powerful memories.

He passed away at Al-Makassed Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem on August 24, at the age of 79, bringing to a close a legacy that cannot truly be described, but only experienced.

His life almost exactly spanned the age of the Palestinian Nakba. He was born mere months before the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homeland. Yet his death in an occupied city tells us that the story of Mansour, his art and the Palestinian struggle for freedom is far from over.

Oddly, for years, I knew Mansour through a single painting: Jamal al-Mahamel (The Camel Carrier of Hardships).

The title itself requires a pause. The phrase is rooted in Palestinian and Levantine popular culture. It describes one who shoulders the collective struggles, pain and responsibilities of others.

In Mansour’s post-Nakba world, that person is an elderly Palestinian porter, a barefoot worker carrying the burden of an entire homeland on his back. That homeland is represented by Jerusalem, with the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holiest sites, rising above it.

Mansour, however, was not a Muslim. He belonged to the once-thriving, though sadly shrinking, Palestinian Christian community and came from the town of Birzeit, near Ramallah in the West Bank.

Let that sink in. One of the most iconic Palestinian paintings of the modern era, celebrating the centrality of Jerusalem and one of its most recognizable historic Islamic sites, was painted by a Christian man.

In the age of Israeli extremists like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his “religious wars,” this may appear unusual. For Palestinians, it is anything but. Though deeply spiritual, Palestinians have historically transcended religious divides in their long struggle for freedom.

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A mosque is never just a mosque, and a church is never just a church. They are powerful symbols of history, culture, roots, spirituality and continuity. Mansour entrusted the Camel of Hardships with carrying all of that alone, as the world watched an old man bent beneath an unbearable weight, yet fierce and unbroken in his resolve.

Though the painting was created in 1973, it exploded in popularity during the First Intifada, the popular uprising that unified Palestinians everywhere. It took on a renewed meaning: we Palestinians may be standing alone, exhausted by time and the betrayal of others, but we remain as steadfast as ever.

The last time I saw that painting hanging in the living room of my old house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza was also the last time I saw my father, most of my brothers and many of my childhood friends.

My father died years later. The house was bombed. The painting no longer hangs where it once did, at the heart of our old refugee home.

Ironically, it was only after I left Palestine that I discovered that Sliman Mansour was far more than the creator of a single painting. He belonged to an artistic movement that taught visual sumud, steadfastness, to an entire generation.

My lack of knowledge was not a fault of my own. Artists such as Mansour, Ismail Shammout, Fathi Ghaben, Vera Tamari, Tayseer Barakat and Nabil Anani, among others, were simply forbidden by Israeli military ordinances.

Israel is afraid of Palestinian art, particularly art that preserves memory, asserts steadfastness and speaks of revolution. During the Intifada, the Israeli army would storm Palestinian refugee camps almost daily, particularly before dawn, to ensure that artistic expressions on the walls were painted over.

The soldiers did not paint over the walls themselves, of course. They dragged weary refugees from their sleep and forced them to erase every piece of graffiti, every image and every word. The soldiers may have thought they were carrying out a military duty, somehow protecting Israel’s national security. In reality, they were trying to erase evidence of a people whose roots in the land ran far deeper than the occupation itself.

But the evidence was never erased. It could not simply be painted over, even when the artist himself disappeared, because true art is more than an arrangement of colors on canvas. It is one of the deepest forms of documenting one’s own existence.

Fathi Ghaben, who became a close friend of my family, had, like most Gazans, more than his share of suffering. He was a refugee from a once-serene village called Hirbiya, north of Gaza. His family sought refuge in Gaza during the Nakba.

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Ghaben had no memories of the village he lost as a child, yet its colors filled his paintings. For him, Palestine was a beautiful woman, powerful in her determination yet gentle in her gaze. Her eyes, always sharply defined, embodied the beauty of a homeland that never abandoned him. She was the worker, the farmer, the student, the protester, the fighter.

Ghaben was repeatedly imprisoned by Israel for emphasizing the colors of the Palestinian flag in his art, accused of “incitement through his paintings.” The occupation army killed his young nephew in 1982, and many of his relatives were killed in the genocide.

Ghaben himself died during the genocide, in February 2024, after being displaced from his home.

For me, and dare I say for many of my generation, it is difficult to process art that does not carry this kind of weight—art that goes beyond mere “expression” and becomes an experience of blood, sweat, tears and the burden of memories that can only be put to rest when justice in Palestine finally prevails.

I think back to the Camel of Hardships, and I am convinced that Mansour’s figure represented more than Palestine and the Palestinian. Perhaps unknowingly, he was also painting the Palestinian artist himself.

They, too, carried an immense responsibility on their shoulders. Without them, several generations might never have truly appreciated the colors of Palestine, smelled the powder of revolution, or understood the true meaning of losing a homeland. 

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