In Hebron, the loom does not flatter the buyer. It counts. Black thread crosses white cotton until a fishnet appears, then an olive branch, then the road pattern that looks less like ornament than a record of movement.
Refusal is woven before it is worn
The mistake is to treat the pattern as costume after the fact. By 1936 it had already moved from field cloth to public signal; by the First Intifada it had become a language a checkpoint could read.
The grid survives because it is specific: cotton ground, black motif, a factory name, a city, a hand that knows the count.