Fathi Ghaben (1947–2024)

Self-taught Palestinian artist and educator Fathi Ghaben, renowned for his vibrant paintings commemorating Palestinian culture and resistance, died in Gaza on February 25, after Israeli officials failed to heed pleas from his friends and family that he be moved outside the besieged region to receive medical treatment. He was seventy-seven. Ghaben had been suffering from respiratory problems that made it difficult for him to breathe. A video uploaded to Facebook on February 19 by a family member showed the artist struggling for air, repeating, “I am suffocating. I want to breathe. I want to breathe,” before being overwhelmed by a coughing fit. In the days preceding his death, Ghaben had been hospitalized at the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, according to thePalestine News and Information Agency(WAFA). Palestinian journalist Basel Khalaf revealed in a post to the platformXthat Ghaben’s home had been destroyed in Israel’s sustained drubbing of Gaza, and the painter’s “well-known works of art lost in the rubble.” Calling Ghaben’s death “a loss to Palestinian art,” the Palestinian ministry of culture in astatementaffirmed that it was necessary that the artist leave the area “to complete his treatment, due to the lack of medicines and oxygen in Gaza, but the occupation authorities did not allow him to leave the Strip.”

Fathi Ghaben was born in 1947 in Hiribya in the Gaza Strip. The following year, the village was depopulated in the Nakba, or “Catastrophe,” which saw some 750,000 Palestinians forced from their homes by Israel, and Ghaben moved with his family to the Jabaliya camp in Gaza, where he would spend most of his life before moving to Nasser in 2015. He left school in the sixth grade to help support his family byselling newspapers, and by working in a citrus orchard. Ghaben began painting around this time, frequentlyusing his fingersin place of a brush, preferring the intimacy of touch. He enrolled in Al-Azhar University in the 1960s but dropped out owing to financial pressures. Despite these, he managed to scrape together enough money for art supplies, and continued to paint, working at home, where he was by now surrounded by his wife and children. Painting eventually became a full-time job for him, with much of his art centered the working class: laborers and farmers, whom he depicted at their daily tasks and engaged in activities like celebrating and protesting. A number of his works incorporated the Palestinian flag, the illustration of which was forbidden by Israel beginning in 1967, with the presentation of its colors together banned beginning in 1980.

Gheben was arrested multiple times throughout the 1970s and ’80s owing to his refusal to hew to the bans. In 1984, he was arrested by Israeli occupation forces, fined, and sentenced to six months in prison. Israeli officials at this time confiscated seven of his paintings: Copies of his works had been printed as posters and widely distributed throughout Gaza and the West Bank, and occupying forces viewed these as propaganda that might incite demonstrations.

“He was the first to use the Palestinian flag in paintings. . . . I vividly remember posters of his art everywhere in the city,” Aser El Saqqa, the Palestinian-born founder and managing director of London’s Arts Canteen, an organization dedicated to supporting Arab artists, told theArt Newspaper. “For us to see the Palestinian flag at that time was a sign of encouragement and bravery. I really don’t know how he managed to get so many posters printed.”

Expanding his practice to include sculpture, Ghaben exhibited widely in Palestine and internationally. Separately, he worked as an adviser to Palestine’s ministry of culture, and as an educator, giving art lessons at the Al-Naser Islamic school for thirteen years. A cofounder of Gaza’s Association of Fine Artists and Artists in Gaza, he established the Fathi Ghaben Center of Arts, with the goal of discovering and aiding promising young artists in Gaza. Among the honors he received during his lifetime were the Medal of Sword of Canaan, presented to him by Yasser Arafat, and the Annual Media Freedom Awards Appreciation Award, bestowed upon him last year by the Palestinian Press House.

Gaben’s death occurred days before it was revealed that Gaza ison the edgeof famine as Israel’s retaliatory assault on the region, conducted in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, seems set to enter its sixth month. About 1,200 Israelis werekilledin the October 7 Hamas raid and some 250 taken hostage; the IDF on February 24announceda ground-ops death toll of 238. The health ministry in Gaza on March 4reportedat least 30,534 Palestinians dead.

“I keep asking  myself whether my children will live under a continued occupation, or will it ever end? How long will they suffer?” Ghaben asked the Palestinian Chronicle in 2008. “We are all still trapped here inside Gaza Strip.”