Oil painting, 2000, 160X200 cm. by Tamam El-Akhal

Our bond with the fruitful evergreen olive tree is age-old. It is due less to its bounty than to the similarity of our characters. Fruits dug deep into hard rocky land bespeak of our strong attachment to our ancestral country. It's defiance of elements and time reflects our struggle against greater powers and huge odds. We both endure, yet in the end we both survive.

Detailed Story:
Upon many of Palestine’s heights and mountain tops stands the olive tree a blessed and evergreen tree, the symbol of Palestine and struggle for life-however harsh life is. As though it is challenging the mighty rocks.

The dearth that encircles us from every corner of the Arab homeland evokes in my mind family – just like the olive tree – enduring and attached to their legitimate rights and to life.

Despite political negotiations, spanning about a century, once with the British and their successors, and at another time with the Zionist enemy to achieve justice – these negotiations, against the background of what we are now witnessing, are at a standstill, as though crashing into arid and unspeaking rocks which have only led to more dispersal, for our people, in the five continents. Despite the dispersal, alienation, the harsh uprooting from the homeland, our people have been able to overcome rocks and to extract from these rocks a place to be for a while until such time when the usurped homeland is fully restored, in order to happily enjoy life on its soil.