Handala And The Freeze Point

Handala And The Freeze Point: How To Disable A Militant Icon.

A small boy with his back turned, hands clasped behind him, barefoot and ragged, an eternal witness, helpless in front of injustice. For many, this is Handala: a ten-year-old symbol of tragedy, frozen in silence.

But Handala was never meant to be a mute bystander. Born in the press, he was improved into militancy using daily papers in Kuwait, Beirut, and London, he infiltrated living rooms, cafes, buses, and workplaces, finding his way into camp walls, school notebooks, banners, and graffiti. He circulated without permission, disappearing from editorial oversight and institutional supervision.

Far from passive, Handala was meant to intervene. He threw stones, planted flags, and shook his fist, actively participating in the struggle.

I drew him as a child who is not beautiful; his hair is like the hair of a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon. Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed or pampered child. He is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an icon that protects me from making mistakes. – Naji al-Ali

That mobility, shifting from action to observation depending on what the scene demanded, is what placed Handala firmly inside the logic of militant improvisation. From protests to despair, resistance to ridicule, his image shifted as swiftly as the crisis. His flexibility made him effective, his outline, instantly recognisable, reproduced endlessly on walls, banners, T-shirts, and solidarity posters across the world, in fact he was so averted to monumentalisation that he refused even provincial framing:

He was the arrow of the compass, pointing steadily towards Palestine. Not just Palestine in geographical terms, but Palestine in its humanitarian sense, the symbol of a just cause, whether it is located in Egypt, Vietnam or South Africa. – Naji al-Ali

But then came what I define as the Freeze Point, the moment a tactic ossifies into a canonical icon. It is the cultural equivalent of guerrilla theory’s warning: once a mobile unit builds a fortress, it gains stability and loses mobility, becoming easier to neutralise.

By the late 1980s, Handala froze. After Naji al-Ali’s assassination in 1987, his icon was sanctified. The First Intifada had just erupted, and in the absence of his creator, Handala was quickly adopted as a rallying emblem. He appeared on banners, leaflets, graffiti walls, and protest placards, omnipresent, but no longer adaptive. The figure was untouchable, beyond revision. What had been a living tactic became a sacred image.

NGOs, solidarity networks, and cultural institutions soon embraced this frozen Handala. His outline was reproduced on museum walls, solidarity stamps, and heritage merchandise. He was made safe for circulation within official spaces, transformed from a guerrilla courier into a commemorative logo. The boy who once threw stones or planted flags was now confined to a single, silent posture.

Circulation persisted, but adaptation was over. The figure no longer responded to massacres, strikes, or betrayals in real time. He no longer bent to the shifting crises of his people. Instead, he symbolised Palestine in the abstract,  a banner of identity, detached from the tactical urgency of the struggle on the ground.

Preservation masquerading as honour, repetition mistaken for survival. Revolutionary art must resist reverence and be prepared to vanish before it can be revered in a static monument. Handala’s Freeze Point shows how insurgent icons are neutralised not by being banned, but by being revered above their objective.

When Handala exposes the plots and conspiracy of the enemies of the people, his role is positive. – Naji al-Ali