Palestinian women highlight cause using tapestries

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON (AA) – A series of tapestries embroidered by Palestinian women seek to raise awareness in central London about the Palestinian people’s 70-year-old right to return to their homes.

The Palestinian History Tapestry Project opened earlier this month in P21 Gallery in King’s Cross, near one of the busiest train stations in the country.

The project uses the embroidery skills of Palestinian women to “illustrate aspects of the land and peoples of Palestine – from Neolithic times to the present.”

It was proposed in 2012 by Jan Chalmers who worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza and was familiar with Palestinian embroidery.

She previously put great effort into the creation of a 122-meter South African tapestry stitched by village women living in poverty on the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

The Keiskamma Tapestry, illustrating 300 years of history leading to the end of apartheid, is now on permanent display in the Parliament House in Cape Town.

Jan’s husband Ian Chalmers, who also got involved in humanitarian efforts in Palestine, told Anadolu Agency that the foundations of this project were laid back in 1963 after he read a book on Palestine’s history.

He said his wife decided to start a new project and this time she chose the oppressed Palestinian people and their art of embroidery.

The project’s official opening at the P21 Gallery in central London coincided with the 70th anniversary of UN Resolution 194, affirming Palestinian refugees’ right of return to their homes in what is today Israel – a right that Israel continues to defy.

Judith English, the treasurer and co-founder of the projects, said the right to return to their land is important for Palestinians.

“We hope that the tapestry will service a way of spreading awareness of the conditions that many Palestinians now live in and about the importance of recognizing their rights,” she told Anadolu Agency.

The exhibition holds samples of six original embroideries and many high-resolution photographic copies of hundreds of tapestries by Palestinian women in Gaza, the West Bank, Galilee and Al Naqab, and refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan.

More than 200 Palestinian protesters have been martyred by Israeli security forces since March 30 during rallies where they demand their right to return to their homes in historical Palestine, from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.