Palestinian posters
s are a common medium for political messaging in Palestinian activism. Often depicting common national iconography such as keffiyehs, olive branches, and the Palestinian flag, posters have been instrumental in crafting a national Palestinian identity. Poster art was used as a support for the Palestinian National Movement, where it also became a vehicle for artistic expression. Posters are often categorized under topics of peace and resistance, employing images of suffering, martyrdom, and cultural heritage.
The emergence of the Palestine Poster Project Archives has made poster art much more accessible to the public; as of December 2024, the site has 22,004 posters and 4,806 artists listed. The rise of the Internet and digitization has also led to a surge of preservation efforts and increased public reception of exhibitions.
History
Pre-1967
s were produced in Palestine as early as the late 19th century. As a result of a broader trend of globalization, French and British companies sought to profit off of travel to the Mediterranean, financing marketing campaigns that advertised tourism in the Holy Land. The earliest known Palestine poster was published in France and depicts a landscape adorned with olive branches.Posters have been a defining feature in Palestinian visual culture since British Mandate rule. Initially, posters were made mostly for marketing, however, beginning in the 1930s, posters were used to advocate for Palestinian statehood. Posters were produced in the early 20th century protesting the British Mandate of Palestine. The use of posters as an art form declined during and immediately after the Nakba. Post-Nakba, a nationalist movement surged in which Palestinians sought a unified cultural identity. While previously the production of Palestinian posters was driven by commercial motives, the Israeli occupation prompted the assertion of cultural identity in Palestinian art through themes of land, exile, and resistance.
Post-1967
At the turn of the 20th century, the poster emerged anew as a style of Palestinian art largely informed by global solidarity movements, particularly in the wake of the violent aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War.Posters were produced by numerous political organizations, mainly the Palestine Liberation Organization as a means of mobilization and dissemination of nationalist rhetoric. Due to their ease of replication, posters were universalized and rapidly became a primary medium for resistance and artistic expression, as well as a tool of interface between those inside Palestine and those exiled outside of it.
One common theme of Palestinian posters during this period was as a way to commemorate martyrs, which includes Palestinian national heroes, militant fighters, and civilians that had been killed by the Israeli military.
Post-Oslo Accords
The use of posters to commemorate martyrs became very widespread during the Second Intifada, beginning in late 2000, and especially during and after the 2002 Battle of Jenin. One reason for this was a shift towards emphasis on memorializing martyrs as a way to express Palestinian nationalism and resistance against Israel.The rise of the Internet allowed for a new wave of Palestinian cyber-activism. Democratized access to Palestinian poster archives meant there was an increased visibility of posters that might have not been seriously engaged with before, and the public could now interact with collections that only a select group of scholars previously had access to. Digitization of archives also meant that anyone could repurpose old posters, such as the "remixing" of the 1936 Zionist Visit Palestine poster, edited in protest of the West Bank barrier. In line with emerging technologies, posters became even more reproducible, and smaller artists could create digital posters to be platformed.
Exhibitions of the posters
There have been a number of artistic exhibitions that feature Palestinian posters as either the primary focus or as a significant component. Known exhibitions have been housed in art museums and university buildings in the United States, Belgium, and Palestine.| Year | Title | Curators | Sponsors | Locations exhibited | Other information |
| 1983 | Personal collection of Daniel Walsh | Daniel Walsh | American Palestine Educational Foundation | UN General Assembly Building; New York City | Intended for exhibition at the UN International Conference on Palestine in Geneva; canceled. |
| 1996–1997 | Both Sides of Peace: Israeli – Palestinian Political Posters | Dana Bartelt Yossi Lemel Sliman Mansour Fawzy El Emrany | American Institute of Graphic Arts Raleigh Gallery Group of the Contemporary Art Museum | Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh; Raleigh, North Carolina Colorado State University; Fort Collins, Colorado | |
| 2008 | Blue Square Posters Exhibition | Al-Quds University | Abu Jihad Museum for the Prisoners Movement Affairs; Jerusalem | The Abu Jihad Museum continually houses rotating exhibits of Palestinian posters. | |
| 2008–2013 | Posters of the Palestinian Revolution: The Ezzeddin Kalak Collection | Rasha Salti | Palestinian General Delegation at the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg Commissariat Général aux Relations Internationales International Relations Ministry in the French Community | The Mundaneum; Mons, Belgium Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art; Jerusalem | Organized for the MASARAT Palestine initiative in Wallonie – Bruxelles. |
| 2013 | Personal collections of George Al Ama and Saleh Abdel Jawad | Inass Yassin | Birzeit University | Birzeit University Museum; Birzeit, Palestine |
Preservation efforts and public reception
The Palestine Poster Project Archives was established by Arab studies scholar and curator Daniel Walsh as a means of accessibly preserving the history of Palestinian posters. In addition to Walsh's physical collection, digitized versions of archival materials have been made available on the project's website.Walsh and the PPPA have been received with a number of controversies surrounding the works' public exhibition. In 1983, curated posters from Walsh's collection were exhibited in the UN General Assembly Building and were intended for display at the International Conference on Palestine in Geneva. An attending Israeli delegate submitted a formal complaint, calling the exhibition "more than anti-Israel", and the exhibit was rapidly disassembled and its presence at the Conference was cancelled. Later, Walsh curated a group of Palestine posters to be nominated for the UNESCO International Memory of the World Register. The project was nominated and considered for the register in 2014–2015, 2016–2017, and 2023–2024. In 2015, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova criticized the collection, claiming that some of the included posters were antisemitic. UNESCO requested that Walsh revise the collection before it was evaluated for the register.