🖼️ Object Highlight: A Short History of the Palestinian Keffiyeh

As Curator of the Museum of the Palestinian People, my mission is to make Palestinian arts and culture more visible and legible to the world, and to situate it within the global discourse of art history. To this end, I have developed the Object Highlights essay series to offer critical analysis and contextualization of Palestinian artistic production, cultural identity, and material practices— within Palestine, across the refugee camps, and in diaspora. Each essay centers on a single work of art either created by a Palestinian artist or addressing the Palestinian experience, providing an interpretation of its aesthetic, cultural, and historical significance. All objects featured in this series are drawn from the permanent collection of the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, DC.

To learn more about the museum’s collections and ongoing research, please visit: https://mpp-dc.org/learn/. Please cite this essay if you reference or quote it in your writing, materials, and research.

Wafa Ghnaim, "Object Highlight: A Short History of the Palestinian Keffiyeh,” The Tatreez Institute (blog), May 15, 2025, https://www.tatreezandtea.com/tatreezing/keffiyeh

Until the 1920s, the keffiyeh (also known as hattah, a traditional square, loose-weave headscarf) was primarily worn by Bedouin men in Palestine. Villagers (fellahin) and townsmen had distinct head coverings, such as the red tarboosh (fez) and the laffeh (wrapped headscarf). Bedouin men typically folded the keffiyeh diagonally and secured it with a black cord known as an ‘aqal. Woven from cotton, wool, or silk, there are a variety of colors found in the historic keffiyeh including gold, purple, white, black, green, and red.

During the 1936–39 Great Arab Revolt against British occupation, Palestinian men of all social classes (bedouin, villager, and townsmen) adopted the keffiyeh as a symbol of unity, resistance, and nationalism, creating a uniformed image of solidarity to British soldiers. The scarf reemerged in the 1960s as a broader icon of Palestinian liberation, famously worn by Yasser Arafat and Leila Khaled, and continues to be worn as both a historic garment and act of solidarity in global protests.

Today, the Hirbawi Keffiyeh Factory is the last remaining producer in Palestine. While the keffiyeh has been widely appropriated by fashion brands and even marketed as Israeli cultural heritage, Palestinians wearing it have faced discrimination, including bans and denied entry into American museums, hate crimes, and accusations of terrorism. Until 2021, a Google search for “what scarf do terrorists wear” returned the Palestinian keffiyeh as a top result, reinforcing harmful stereotypes and propagating misinformation. Among those results was a Wikipedia article that discussed contemporary political perceptions of the headscarf, though it has since been edited to include accurate citations and historical context.

In the same year, 2021, Palestinian-American supermodel Bella Hadid joined a protest in Bay Ridge, New York, wearing a keffiyeh. Shortly afterward, the official Twitter account of the Israeli government accused her of antisemitism, equating her public expression of solidarity with a form of hate speech. Such conflations not only misrepresent acts of protest and protected free speech, but continue to endanger Palestinians and allies who wear the keffiyeh, fueling a climate where cultural identity is criminalized and public support for Palestinian rights is met with threats, censorship, and violence.

For Palestinians, the keffiyeh is not a trend. The keffiyeh is a traditional garment connecting them with their identity, family, and homeland, serving as a living symbol of resilience in the face of Israeli violence and erasure.

The museum honors the keffiyeh as a vital component of Palestinian intangible cultural heritage, as well as its evolving symbolism as a marker of cultural identity and solidarity around the world.

Artwork Details
Title: Keffiyeh (Mid 20th Century)
Artist: Maker Once Known
🖼 Object No. 2020.109
🔎 On View Now

Additional Reading:

  • AlJazeera English, The Take: The last keffiyeh factory in Palestine. 11 January, 2024. [Web]

  • NPR, All Things Considered. How the keffiyeh became a symbol for Palestinian liberation. 4 December, 2023. [Web] [Podcast]

  • Vox, How the keffiyeh became a symbol of the Palestinian cause. 6 December, 2023. [Web]

  • CNN, The keffiyeh explained: How this scarf became a Palestinian national symbol. 28 November, 2023. [Web]. 

Image Credits: