We assert the inalienable rights of all Palestinian refugees and exiles to return to our original homes just as we uphold our economic, social, and political rights and freedoms across varied geographies of exile.
Palestinian refugees have defied a multiplicity of state and colonial violences, displacements, and sieges, from the camps of Jenin, Shu’fat, and Rafah (Palestine), to Wehdat and Al-Hussein (Jordan), to Tel al-Zaatar, Shatila, and Nahr al-Bared (Lebanon), to Al Waleed and Tanaf (Syria/Iraq), and to Yarmouk and Dera’a (Syria). With every moment of death and destruction in the camps, and through the precarity of an enduring condition of statelessness, Palestinian refugees teach us that Return is an imperative material need. We uphold the promise of return and a life of dignity for all refugees, regardless of location or status. We fight against the violence of all border regimes and the social hierarchies that deny millions of refugees their full personhood.
by Juhaina Habibi Kandalaft
Juhaina Habibi Kandalaft was born in Jerusalem in 1947 and raised in Haifa and Nazareth. She was married for 55 years to Raphael Kandlaft, who passed away in 2022, and together they raised four children and welcomed 11 grandchildren. Juhaina currently lives in Nazareth, and initially began painting as a hobby to express her feelings and inner impulses. Juhaina eventually studied art at the Oranim College for Arts and graduated in 1985. She worked as a painter, sculpture and art teacher for 26 years, instilling the love of art in hundreds of pupils in Nazareth schools.
As an Arab Palestinian artist, her belonging to her tarnished homeland is highly visible in her work where the land, trees and soil are often central. Juhaina gathers the forms and colors of her land to build a new entity. She has participated in group exhibitions around the world, including in England, Egypt, Qatar and Germany as well as in local exhibitions in Nazareth and other cities. She is a member of Ibdaa’ Association for the advancement of the arts.
Sabra and Shatila was created after the 1982 massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla and the ongoing plight of Palestinians that followed. This painting is an expression of the pain and misery of thousands of wounded and murdered Palestinian fathers, mothers and innocent children during this massacre.
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