{"id":18884,"date":"2026-06-30T16:02:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=18884"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:02:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:02:40","slug":"how-some-in-palestinian-diaspora-find-connection-identity-and-resilience-in-traditional-embroidery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=18884","title":{"rendered":"How some in Palestinian diaspora find connection, identity and resilience in traditional embroidery"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MARIAM FAM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Decades later, Samar Kabouli still fondly recalls gathering with women in her family and sipping cardamom-spiced coffee as they embroidered fabric with colorful threads in traditional Palestinian patterns.<\/p>

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Born in Lebanon to Palestinian refugees, Kabouli had never seen her parents\u2019 homeland. But more than just making pretty designs, the threads in her needle were stitching a connection to her heritage.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s known as \u201ctatreez,\u201d and Kabouli, 48, started doing the traditional form of Palestinian embroidery in her teens to make money. Besides an economic lifeline, tatreez has provided her with a bridge to the land her parents fled during the 1948 mass displacement that Palestinians call their Nakba, or catastrophe.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes in present day Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel\u2019s creation. Israel refused their return.<\/p>\n

Kabouli\u2019s work allows her to send a message of resilience, of survival.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still here,\u201d she said. \u201cAll what has been happening in Gaza \u2026 and we\u2019re still standing and we\u2019ll not forget the cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

From refugee camps to stitching circles and from museum halls to online classes, many in the Palestinian diaspora communities worldwide engage with tatreez as far more than a decorative aesthetic.<\/p>

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They\u2019re finding in it a celebration of cultural heritage, a bridge to their homeland and dispersed communities and \u2014 with its myriad embroidered symbols \u2014 a visual language of storytelling. To many, refugees or not, it\u2019s become a symbol of Palestinian identity and pride, a vehicle for documenting history and a form of resistance.<\/p>\n

With the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, some have also used it to raise funds for people there or stitched designs to focus attention on Palestinian suffering in the enclave.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of people who came and they\u2019re like, \u2018OK, we want to do a T-shirt with a Gaza chest or we want to do a scarf with the Gaza motif,\u2019\u201d said Ali Jaafar, general manager of Inaash Association, where Kabouli works. The Lebanese organization provides Palestinian women in refugee camps in Lebanon with much-needed income through tatreez, while also aiming to help preserve and promote the heritage. It sells embroidered fashion, home decor and art pieces, and showcases the art form in exhibitions and museums.<\/p>\n