Why the Watermelon Became a Symbol of Palestine

Scroll through any pro-Palestine march in London, a student society stall or a social media feed and you will see it: a slice of watermelon. Red flesh, black seeds, green rind and a white inner edge. It looks playful, but for Palestinians it carries decades of meaning.

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The colours of the flag

The reason is simple. A cut watermelon shows red, green, black and white, the four colours of the Palestinian flag. Where the flag itself could not be shown, the fruit could say the same thing without a single word.

When the flag was restricted

After 1967, displaying the Palestinian flag in the West Bank and Gaza was treated as a political act and could lead to arrest. In 1980, an exhibition in Ramallah by artists Sliman Mansour, Nabil Anani and Issam Badr was shut down, and artists were reportedly told that work in the flag's colours was not allowed. Stories spread of young people carrying sliced watermelons through the streets as a quiet act of defiance. Some of those accounts are hard to verify, but the image stuck and became part of Palestinian memory.

From art to a global symbol

The Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani painted The Story of the Watermelon in 2007, and his watermelon later became one of the most shared images of solidarity. When restrictions on the flag were debated again in 2023, campaigners in Tel Aviv put watermelon images on taxis with the words: this is not a Palestinian flag. Online, the emoji became a way to show support when posts about Palestine seemed to reach fewer people.

What it means today

Today the watermelon stands for identity, resilience and a sense of humour under pressure. Wearing it is a way of saying: we see you, and we will not stop showing it. In the UK you will find it on banners at marches, on badges at Palestine society fairs and on the clothes people wear every day.

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FAQ

Why is the watermelon a symbol of Palestine?

A cut watermelon shows red, green, black and white, the colours of the Palestinian flag. It became a way to show the flag's colours when the flag itself was restricted.

When did the watermelon become a Palestinian symbol?

Its use grew after 1967, when displaying the Palestinian flag was restricted, and it spread worldwide through art such as Khaled Hourani's The Story of the Watermelon (2007) and later on social media.