Martyrs of the Zionist Genocide: Palestinian Painter Heba Zagout

Her works, unique poetic records of her love for her land, are incinerated and buried under the rubble of Gaza.
Two years ago, on October 13, 2023, Palestine lost one of its greatest artists. Painter Heba Zagout was murdered by an Israeli airstrike that destroyed her home in the Gaza Strip. Two of her four young children were also killed in the attack.

Heba Zagout was born on February 14, 1984, in the Al-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. She was descended from one of the hundreds of thousands of families expelled from their lands during the "Nakba"—the "Catastrophe," a violent ethnic cleansing operation carried out by Zionist militias in the Palestinian territories since the late 1940s.

Heba's family came from the Palestinian city of Isdud—an ancient settlement, recorded in biblical texts as one of the five Philistine city-states. According to the partition plan outlined in UN Resolution 181, Isdud was to belong to the Palestinian state. In 1948, however, the city was attacked by Israeli paramilitary groups, who expelled all 5,000 residents and seized their lands. On the rubble of the razed village, the Israeli government built the current port city of Ashdod.

Besieged by the violence of Israeli troops, Heba's grandparents were forced to seek refuge in the Gaza Strip. They would live in the Al-Bureij refugee camp for the rest of their lives. There they raised their children and witnessed the birth of their grandchildren.
Heba Zagout lived her entire life under Israeli occupation and military siege, confined to what has long been considered the "largest open-air concentration camp in the world." She grew up observing bombings and military offensives and witnessing the perverse effects of the deprivations imposed on the Palestinian people. Food, clean water, jobs, public services—everything was scarce in the Gaza Strip.
From a young age, Heba found in art a means of expressing her feelings, her interests, and her dreams of freedom. She grew up listening to her uncles' and grandparents' stories about a Palestine she never knew. It was through painting that Heba attempted to connect with that world.

Heba studied graphic design at the Gaza Learning Center and then studied fine arts at Al-Aqsa University, where she graduated in 2007. She later worked as an art teacher at a Gaza primary school. She also worked as an educator for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

It was her vibrantly colored paintings, full of life and beauty, and imbued with poignant symbolism, that made Heba an admired artist. She had a particular predilection for depicting the landscapes, customs, and people of Palestine, transposing onto canvas the stories of refugees, daily life in Gaza, and the traditions and symbols that evoke the culture of her people. Heba's art was, above all, a visual record that documented Palestinian history and heritage—a means of confronting the historical and cultural erasure imposed by the Israeli occupation.

Heba depicted Palestinian homes, olive trees, mosques, and churches in Gaza. She told the stories of her family and the memories of her childhood. And if the barbed wire fences and walls erected by Israel prevented her from leaving, Heba traveled through her works.

She painted the Old City of Jerusalem, depicting its olive-lined alleys and the sumptuous Dome of the Rock. She painted Bethlehem and its ancient walls. She painted the village of Isdud, where her ancestors lived. And she painted herself in several self-portraits, sometimes wearing the thaub and tatreez embroidery, reaffirming her pride in her Palestinian identity, sometimes expressing her desire for peace and freedom.

Commenting on the symbolism of one of these self-portraits, Heba explained: “I was born carrying the word refugee within me. I never saw my hometown, but my aunt, Alia, would tell us about my grandfather's land, the orange groves, the harvest season, and a home full of love and life. I saw the longing in my aunt's eyes as she told us these stories of those times gone by. And I saw the longing to be able to return one day.”

Heba's art was also the means by which she supported her family. Social media was the platform he used to break the Israeli siege and showcase his art to followers around the world. In 2021, Heba held her last solo exhibition, titled "My Children in Quarantine," exploring her family's routine during the COVID-19 pandemic. The exhibition was held at an institute in Tulkarem, in the West Bank.

For many years, Heba managed through her art to keep the horror, inhumanity, and perversity of Israeli repression from occupying her mind. But barbarity prevailed on October 13, 2023—one week after the start of Israel's genocidal offensive. Her works, unique poetic records of her love for her land, are incinerated and buried under the rubble of Gaza, along with the bodies of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
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