Tatreez keeps Palestinians connected to their heritage, identity and homeland

Decades later, Samar Kabouli still fondly recalls gathering with the women in her family and sipping cardamom-spiced coffee as they embroidered fabric with colourful threads in traditional Palestinian patterns.

Born in Lebanon to Palestinian refugees, Kabouli had never seen her parents' homeland. But more than simply creating beautiful designs, the threads in her needle stitched a connection to her heritage.

Known as tatreez, the traditional form of Palestinian embroidery, Kabouli, 48, began practising it in her teens to earn a living. Beyond providing an economic lifeline, tatreez has also given her a bridge to the land her parents fled during the 1948 mass displacement that Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. Israel subsequently refused to allow them to return.

Kabouli says her work enables her to convey a message of resilience and survival.

"We're still here," she said. "After everything that has happened in Gaza ... we're still standing, and we will not forget the cause."

From refugee camps to embroidery circles, and from museum galleries to online classes, members of Palestinian diaspora communities around the world view tatreez as far more than decorative needlework.

For many, it celebrates cultural heritage, connects them to their homeland and dispersed communities and, through its many embroidered symbols, serves as a visual language of storytelling. Whether refugees or not, many regard it as a symbol of Palestinian identity and pride, a means of documenting history and a form of resistance.

Since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began, some have also used tatreez to raise funds for people in the territory or created embroidered designs to draw attention to Palestinian suffering.

"We had many people who came and said, 'We want to make a T-shirt with a Gaza chest motif,' or 'We want a scarf with the Gaza motif,'" said Ali Jaafar, general manager of the Inaash Association, where Kabouli works.

The Lebanese organisation provides Palestinian women living in refugee camps with much-needed income through tatreez while helping to preserve and promote the tradition. It sells embroidered fashion, home décor and artworks, and showcases the craft through exhibitions and museums.

Protecting heritage and 'struggling through culture'

Efforts to preserve and raise awareness of tatreez among Palestinians at home and abroad form part of a broader campaign to safeguard a heritage and history that many fear are at risk of being erased.

"Palestinian tatreez is an identity and a document of our presence in every Palestinian village and town," said Maha Saca, founder and director of the Palestinian Heritage Centre in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

She said old embroidered thobes, or dresses, demonstrate the presence of Palestinians in particular locations before many were displaced.

"The Palestinian woman has written the story of her village through motifs inspired by her surroundings and beliefs," Saca said. "We're struggling through culture and saying we have roots."

Palestinian embroidery was added to UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021.

In New York, Lina Barkawi, whose small business teaches tatreez, said "the constant fight for liberation and for Palestinian identity to be recognised globally is really what has driven much of this documentation".

A generational tradition and a window into history

In Arabic, tatreez refers both to embroidery in general and to the distinctive Palestinian style, which has traditionally been passed down through generations by grandmothers and mothers. Some people also seek formal training.

Because Palestinian women historically drew motifs from their surroundings, old embroidered thobes can reveal details about a woman's life, environment and regional identity through their patterns, designs and colours, Saca said.

In the Palestinian context, such links to places — including areas now within Israel — carry particular significance as evidence of a shared past.

"How do we have a Jaffa thobe if we hadn't been in Jaffa?" she said. "We write history on our thobes."

There is also a strong sense of continuity. Saca said her grandmother's embroidered wedding thobe bears the distinctive characteristics of Bethlehem dresses, while her granddaughter's baptism gown features embroidery copied from that same garment.

Tatreez can also be political, both through preserving historic garments and creating new ones.

"Simply preserving dresses from before 1948 is a political act," Barkawi said.

Another example is the so-called intifada thobe, embroidered with Palestinian political symbols, including the national flag. It is associated with the First Intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987 against Israeli occupation.

Stitching, mourning and documenting

Following the outbreak of the Gaza war, triggered by Hamas' 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, fashion designer Hama Hinnawi channelled her grief into tatreez.

Traditionally vibrant and colourful, tatreez no longer felt suited to the moment, she said.

Instead, she embroidered black thread onto black fabric as a statement of mourning for the killings, destruction and displacement in Gaza. She has also transformed some of the war's most recognisable scenes into new embroidery motifs.

"We have a great responsibility to tell this story so it is not buried for future generations — through tatreez, through art and through speaking."

Born in Jordan to Palestinian parents, Hinnawi sought to celebrate Palestinian heritage through her fashion brand by combining tatreez with contemporary clothing.

To her, tatreez simply means home.

"It is identity, pride and storytelling," said Hinnawi, who divides her time between Chicago and Jordan.

She has created embroidery work opportunities for Palestinian women in refugee camps in Jordan and has spoken in the US about tatreez. Before the war, she also worked with women in Gaza.

Barkawi runs an online community of Palestinian and non-Palestinian embroiderers, some of whom have created designs sold to raise funds for families in Gaza. One features a "water and seeds" motif alongside the embroidered message: "Feed Gaza Now."

Members in different countries also recreated a tapestry that once hung in a Gaza home destroyed in a bombing, with each participant stitching one section before sending it on to the next.

Born in the US to a Palestinian father and a Panamanian mother, Barkawi said learning tatreez strengthened her sense of Palestinian identity.

New dresses, woven with personal stories

Completing her first thobe took Barkawi two years.

She incorporated motifs with personal significance, including palm trees representing her name in Arabic and orchids — Panama's national flower — in honour of her mother.

Although technically imperfect, it became the perfect dress for her Islamic marriage ceremony.

"I stitched my story as a Palestinian in the diaspora into this dress."

In Lebanon, Kabouli also once dreamed of owning a tatreez piece for her wedding trousseau, but she could not afford one.

After their parents died, her older sister began working with the Inaash Association to support their large family, and Kabouli learned the craft from her.

Now a production supervisor at Inaash in Beirut, Kabouli sees her younger self in the women working in refugee camps across Lebanon, many of them in the south, which was heavily affected by the latest Israel-Hezbollah war.

The vibrant colours of tatreez often contrast sharply with the harsh living conditions in the camps, where Palestinian refugees face employment restrictions and other hardships. With frequent power cuts, women eager to complete a piece and receive payment sometimes work on rooftops to catch the last rays of sunlight, Jaafar said.

Beyond providing an income, Kabouli says tatreez offers a sense of calm, almost like meditation.

She still has one enduring dream — to visit her parents' homeland in what is now Israel.

Until then, tatreez gives her hope.

"I don't feel far away. I keep working to preserve Palestinian heritage and support the cause," she said. "It connects me to my homeland, especially because we have been deprived of it."