1967: Israel Bans the National Colors of Palestine
What happened?
In the years after Israel seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, raising the Palestinian flag became a crime in both Gaza and the West Bank — as was displaying the national colors of black, white, green, and red, whether in the form of the flag or through artwork. The crackdown on any forms of Palestinian nationalism was so strict that even paintings of watermelons and poppy plants could be considered criminal under Israeli law.
In an interview with Al Bawaba, Palestinian Nabil Anani recalls working on a an art exhibition in 1981, during which an Israeli intelligence official stepped in to give them a warning.
“When we went to the very high-ranked official, he said ‘You are working the gallery against the state, and if you keep working against the state we will take further action…He said we’re not allowed to use symbols against Israel and he focused on the flag — even the colors of the flag, even if it is a flower with the different petals showing each color of the flag, this is prohibited.
“Our friend Issam said, ‘What if I want to paint a watermelon?’ The man said ‘Yes, I suppose you can do that.’ Naturally we ignored the official and painted whatever we wanted.”
For many Palestinians, carrying a watermelon slice became a symbol of resistance. The Age, an Australian newspaper, reported that during the Second Intifada, “Young militants sliced watermelons in half and waved them around, because red, green, white and black were the Palestinian national colours.”
The ban on the flag was not lifted until the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
Any context for the ban?
1967 was the year of the Six-Day War. Tensions between Israel and its neighbors had existed since 1948, and in 1967 Israel launched preemptive air strikes that decimated the forces of Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. According to history.com, “Israel then staged a successful ground offensive and seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.”
In these newly occupied territories, any show of nationalism was quickly cracked down upon.
Proposed bans since then
Even though the Oslo Accords resulted in legitimizing the Palestinian flag, Israel has still made attempts to ban it in the years since.
In 2014, a far-reaching Israeli anti-terrorism bill proposed banning the flag after 11 Israeli civilians were killed in Jerusalem. The attacks followed 7 weeks of bloodshed that had occurred earlier that summer, in which 66 Israeli soldiers and over 2,100 Palestinians (both combatants and civilians) were killed.
In 2018, the Palestinian flag was flown at a protest in Tel Aviv. Afterwards, Israeli lawmaker Dr. Anat Berko announced a plan to propose a ban on waving the flags of “enemy nations.”
