Inspired by the power of art as resistance, the desire to honor Palestinian cultural heritage and to strengthen the movement by connecting activists, the murals of Umm al-Khair came to fruition. Palestinian activist Awdah al-Hathaleen of the village initiated the idea to utilize mural making as a visual language to make an impression on local and international activists visiting his home in solidarity with the Palestinian people, as well as to exemplify the beauty of Umm al-Khair and its history for the residents living there. Located in the Masafer Yatta region in ‘Area C’ of the West Bank, the Hathaleen tribe migrated here after they were forcibly displaced from their lands in al-Arad during the Nakba of 1948. As an unrecognized village living under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Apartheid State, today this rural Bedouin community faces daily imminent demolition orders of its structures and its shepherds are constantly subject to brutalization by settler violence.
As a team of Palestinian activists from the West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as of American Jews, we began the murals of Umm al-Khair by painting in memory of the late Hajj Suleiman al-Hathaleen, Allah Yerhamo, a 73 year-old activist and community leader of the village who was fatally injured in January 2022 after he was run over by an Israeli tow truck. Hajj Suleiman had been peacefully demonstrating a raid by the Israeli Occupation Forces to seize the village’s vehicles, which are a necessity for this rural community to access basic resources like the hospital and a water supply. In early 2023, we began a new mural on the village’s guest house to pay homage to the Palestinian struggle for liberation and connect it to the wider global cause for the liberation of all oppressed people. Insha’Allah mural making in Umm al-Khair will become an ongoing project.