A traditional dress worn by Palestinian women was not the kind of clothing one would expect to become a sign of political expression.
The brightly colored, embroidered woman’s dress is known as a “thobe,” notes the Associated Press.
Now the thobe is gaining popularity as a softer means of identifying with the fight for the establishment of a Palestinian state. It is even competing with the keffiyeh – the head covering worn by Palestinian men protesting Israel’s occupation of land they call their home.
The thobe is covered with complex, colorful embroidery, all put together by hand. It requires months of hard work to make. Some thobes have been sold to buyers for thousands of dollars.
The use of traditional cloth is a celebration of simpler times, when poor Palestinian women would make thobes while resting from a hard day’s work in the fields.
Rashida Tlaib is the first female Palestinian American member of the United States Congress. Last month she wore her mother’s thobe at her official swearing-in ceremony.
The move has led women around the world, especially in Palestinian territories, to publish pictures of themselves in traditional dress on the Twitter social networking service.
Rachel Dedman organized a recent exhibit at the Palestinian Museum in the town of Birzeit in the West Bank. The show centered on the changes to Palestinian embroidery throughout history. Dedman told the Associated Press the thobe is such a powerful sign of political expression because it is more directly linked to culture and history, not politics.
“The historic thobe conjures an ideal of pure and untouched Palestine, before the occupation,” she said.
The Palestinian thobe’s history dates back to the early 19th century, when embroidered goods were made mainly in villages.
Beautifully designed dresses marked major events in women’s lives: the beginning of puberty, marriage, motherhood.
Maha Saca is the director of the Palestinian Heritage Center in Bethlehem. She says the designs were different from one village to the next. In Bethlehem, for example, wealthier women sought special three-dimensional embroidery. Bedouin women, who would spend their lives in travelling communities, made their thobes with large pockets for carrying things. Women from Jaffa, a city famous for its fruit trees, wore orange tree designs.
Thobe designs also expressed women’s different social positions: red was the color for women about to be married, while blue was for women whose husbands had died. Blue with multi-colored embroidery was for women who were thinking about…
