Handala: The Refugee Child Symbol of Palestine
A boy of ten stands with his back to the world, his hands clasped behind him, his feet bare and his clothes patched. He has not moved in more than fifty years. His name is Handala, in Arabic حنظلة, and he is one of the most recognized figures in Palestinian art. He is not a hero or a fighter. He is a barefoot child who turned away from the viewer and refused to turn back, and in that small act he became shorthand for an entire people's Palestinian identity and their insistence on returning home.
TL;DR
Handala is a cartoon character created in 1969 by the Palestinian artist Naji al-Ali. He is drawn as a ten-year-old refugee child, barefoot and in ragged clothes, almost always shown from behind with his hands clasped behind his back. The name comes from the handhal, the bitter colocynth plant, chosen for its bitterness and its deep, stubborn roots. Al-Ali said the boy would stay ten years old until he could return to Palestine, and only then would he turn around and grow up. After al-Ali was assassinated in 1987, the boy outlived him and spread across walls, jewelry, and clothing as a symbol of exile, witness, and the right of return.
Who Created Handala?
Handala was created in 1969 by Naji al-Ali, in Arabic ناجي العلي, a Palestinian cartoonist born in the late 1930s in the Galilee village of al-Shajara. Al-Ali and his family were among the roughly 750,000 Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Nakba, and the village of al-Shajara was depopulated and destroyed. He grew up in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon, where the conditions of exile became the subject of his life's work.
The character first appeared in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyasa, and within a few years he had become al-Ali's signature, standing in the corner of nearly every cartoon he drew. Al-Ali produced thousands of drawings across his career, sharp and unsparing, and the boy was the small witness who watched over all of them.
What Does the Name Handala Mean?
The name comes from the handhal, in Arabic حنظل, the colocynth or bitter desert gourd. Its fruit is intensely bitter, its roots run deep, and it grows back no matter how harsh the ground. Al-Ali chose it on purpose. The bitterness was the taste of exile. The deep roots were the refusal to be uprooted.
That double meaning sits at the center of the character. He is bitter because of what was taken, and rooted because of what cannot be taken. The same pairing runs through other heritage symbols, from the olive tree that survives on stony ground to the wild plants families still gather on the hills.
Why Does Handala Have His Back Turned?
Handala is drawn as a child of ten, barefoot, in patched clothes. Al-Ali said the boy was the age he himself had been when he left Palestine, and that he would stay ten years old until he could return. Only then would the boy turn around and begin to grow.
In the earliest drawings the boy faced the reader. From 1973, al-Ali turned him around. The back became the message: a rejection of solutions handed down from outside, and a quiet vow that the child would not show his face to the world until he could do so at home. Al-Ali described him simply, calling Handala the arrow of a compass pointing steadily toward Palestine.
What Does Handala Represent?
- Steadfastness, in Arabic صمود, sumud. The turned back, the clasped hands, the planted feet: this is a posture of waiting that does not break. Like the olive tree, he stands for staying put when staying is the hardest thing to do.
- The right of return. He remains ten years old until he can go home. It is the same vow carried by the Palestinian key, the iron key to a house left behind in 1948 and kept for generations.
- The bitterness and the roots of exile. The colocynth name holds both at once: the bitter fruit and the root that will not die. He carries the grief of displacement without ever surrendering to it.
- The ordinary Palestinian. He is not a leader and not a soldier. He is a barefoot child, the conscience and the witness, the figure every displaced family recognized at once as one of their own.
Handala After Naji al-Ali
Naji al-Ali was shot in London on 22 July 1987 and died there on 29 August 1987. No one was ever convicted of his killing. By then the boy he drew had outgrown the page. He appeared on walls, on pendants, on schoolbags, sprayed onto barriers and stitched into clothing across the homeland and the diaspora as a figure everyone knew.
That spread carries a risk. A symbol repeated often enough can flatten into decoration, separated from the boy who waits and the man who drew him. He was never meant to be only a logo. He was drawn to keep a single question open: when does the child get to go home. He travels the way other Palestinian symbols travel, by being used, drawn beside the keffiyeh and stitched near the motifs of tatreez, part of a visual language diaspora families use to say where they are from without saying a word.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who created Handala?
Handala was created in 1969 by the Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, who was displaced from the Galilee in 1948 and grew up in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. The character became his signature and appeared in the corner of nearly all of his cartoons.
Why does Handala have his back turned?
From 1973 onward, al-Ali drew Handala facing away from the viewer. The turned back signals a refusal of solutions imposed from outside and a vow that the boy will not show his face until he can return to Palestine.
What does the name Handala mean?
Handala is named after the handhal, the colocynth, a bitter desert plant with deep roots that regrows in harsh ground. Al-Ali chose it for its bitterness, a stand-in for exile, and its rootedness, a stand-in for the refusal to be uprooted.
Why is Handala always a child?
Al-Ali said Handala is ten years old, the age al-Ali was when he left Palestine, and that he will stay ten until he can return home. Only on returning would the boy turn around and begin to grow up.
A Child Who Waits
Handala is not just a cartoon; he is a promise kept in ink. As long as he stands with his back turned and his hands behind him, the question he was drawn to ask stays open, and stays unforgotten. He is a refugee child who became the memory of a people, and a reminder that return is not a slogan but a debt still owed.
This article was written and fact-checked for FALASTIN by Jad Sahyoun, with the assistance of AI tools.
At FALASTIN, we aim to keep that heritage alive through our Symbols of Palestine collection.
100% of profits from FALASTIN are donated to the United Palestinian Appeal.