Tsawwar... George Azar

“It was the spring of 1988, during the first year of the Palestinian Intifada. I was in the West Bank village Beita with three other news photographers. The Israeli Army had recently dynamited 15 homes in the village, killed a sixteen-year-old boy and arrested all the village's men, who they bound by their wrists and gathered en masse in the village’s olive grove before taking them away to prison. We were there looking for pictures. 

It was close to sunset when my friends and I saw a group of eight village girls emerge from the rocks and on a  hilltop above us. They carried a handmade Palestinian flag, outlawed by the occupation. They sang Palestinian songs, taunting the squad of Israel soldiers below them. With a telephoto lens I shot a few pictures from far away. The soldiers screamed and fired tear gas at the girls. When gas fell short, the girls taunted them more. 

As we scrambled up the hill, I changed to a wide angle lens and as we reached the top, one of the girls took the flag and waved it high over her head. I turned the camera vertically, framed the image and pressed the shutter. 

It was an event of no real significance. It didn’t make the news that day, or change life in the besieged village. But for me this picture was one of those rare moments when an image crystallized an issue. For me it summed up the spirit of Palestine in a single frame.”

Words & photo George Azar