In the summer of 2021, I watched my feed transform overnight. Where Palestinian flags had been shared the day before — by friends in Ramallah, by journalists in Sheikh Jarrah, by diaspora communities from Amman to Detroit — there were now watermelon slices. Red flesh, green rind, black seeds. No caption needed. Everyone understood.
A Banned Palette
The roots stretch back to 1980, when Israeli military authorities banned the public display of the Palestinian flag across the West Bank and Gaza. The artist Sliman Mansour recounts how soldiers confiscated artwork at a Ramallah exhibition, warning him against using red, green, black, and white in the same composition. His response was to paint a watermelon.
“The symbol survives where the word is censored. The rind is the resistance.”