JERUSALEM — Born the year before Israel's creation, Sliman Mansour spent his life painting the faces and landscapes of Israeli occupation.
In bright colors, he painted the verdant West Bank hills of his birth with heroic, sometimes surreal, figures: A barefoot porter lugging all of Jerusalem in a sack on his shoulders. Strong, capable women with long necks and big hands, harvesting olives or oranges from trees entwined with barbed wire.
He portrayed characters with agency — what Palestinians call sumud, Arabic for steadfastness or perseverance — through an era when their real-life rights have been eroded, and worse.
Born in 1947 to a Christian Arab family, Mansour lived under three countries' rule without even moving: In 1948, his hometown of Bir Zeit, in what is now the West Bank, passed from British to Jordanian control. In 1967, it came under Israeli occupation, which continues.
His art and life were infused with politics. Arrested by Israeli authorities in 1981, he spent time in Israeli jail. One of his paintings, entitled Prison, shows five handcuffed, hooded men, huddled together, in unusually muted blues, grays and greens.
When he realized the very paint he used to depict those scenes had come from Israel, he organized a boycott of Israeli art supplies in the late 1980s, as head of the League of Palestinian Artists during the first intifada uprising. The result was a series of paintings of biblical scenes, portraits, a dove with an olive branch — made from dry, caked earth on wood.
His paintings hang in museums across the Arab World, his prints have pride of place in living rooms across the Palestinian diaspora, and his posters have lately been waved aloft at pro-Palestinian rallies on college campuses. He helped popularize the watermelon as a symbol of Palestinian resistance, with its colors of the national flag.
Mansour died Aug. 24 in a hospital in East Jerusalem, after an illness, at age 79. He was buried in Bir Zeit, in the occupied West Bank, near the olive groves of his ancestors.
Near the end of his life, Mansour spoke to NPR of a prophecy: That he would die a year before the creation of a Palestinian state.
"I was born one year before the Nakba, and I will die one year before the liberation," he said in an interview in late 2025, using the Arabic word for catastrophe, referring to the mass displacement of Palestinians at Israel's 1948 creation. "I don't care, as long as there is liberation at the end."
But he also said he was worried Israel might seize West Bank olive groves he'd inherited from his grandfather. And he expressed regret that art had proved insufficient as a political tool in his country.
"We discovered art can't change anything. It's too weak," he said.
The interview text below has been edited for length and clarity.
Lauren Frayer: What are your earliest memories of the Palestinian Territories, where you were born and have lived your life?
Sliman Mansour: Fields of olive trees and fruit trees and many springs, water springs. I learned to swim in them. It was like heaven, you know? All these memories from childhood, they formed my image of Palestine — a peaceful place, beautiful place. When I make my paintings, I always try to rebuild that image in my paintings. If I paint a village and I see the walls are broken, I try to make them again, to build them, in the painting. If the trees are broken, I try to make them a beautiful tree, with fruit.
Frayer: You try to fix things with art?
Mansour: Yes, I try to fix what Palestine is.
I lived in an era when I was under Jordanian rule. I heard about Palestine, but I never thought, 'I am a Palestinian.' I used to think I was Jordanian. In the early 1970s, I started to discover I'm a Palestinian. So my art took a 90-degree turn. I started to think about Palestine in a different way.
Frayer: In a political way?
Mansour: In a political way, to paint what I face. When I was young, I was also throwing stones and whatever. I participated in the first intifada, and I understood the philosophy — to rely on oneself, to boycott Israeli products and whatever comes from Israel.
In the 1970s and 80s, we couldn't paint on big canvases — only the size that fits in a car, because we had to smuggle them.
Sometimes I really hate it, you know? As an artist I want to do many things more than politics. But I think here, living under occupation, I can't do anything else. I see many artists making paintings that are beautiful — with nice colors, nice shapes. Rich people buy them and put them in the salon. They look nice with the curtains. But I don't want to waste my life, my time, doing beautiful things for rich people.
If you don't speak to the hearts of the people, if you don't speak to the feelings of the people, then you don't reach people, you can't change anything. Beauty is an important way to reach these hearts. That's how I see it.
If we ever get peace in this land, I'll go back to painting flowers!
Frayer: How did you become an artist?
Mansour: By chance! I was very bad at everything else.
I participated in an exhibition with the United Nations in 1962 I think, and I won a prize there. I was 15, something like that, and I won! It made me aware of my talent, and there was also some prize money. It was small, but I felt like a rich guy!
Frayer: Many of your paintings feature Palestinian women with huge hands. Why is that?
Mansour: They're like a symbol of Palestine, the homeland or motherland, or a symbol of the revolution. For me personally, the symbol should be a beautiful woman with greenish eyes, like olive trees, and with long necks to be dignified, and also big hands. We work with the land, so our hands are not tiny hands! They are working hands. And always, there is Palestinian embroidered dress. That's the identity of the woman, and of the motherland.
Frayer: In your paintings, women have agency, people have power. I wonder if that's intentional, at a time when Palestinian people have been stripped of their rights.
Mansour: Deep inside, I personally believe many Palestinians — most of them — haven't lost agency. We still believe Palestine is ours. We've been here thousands of years. I'm a Christian. My ancestors were here 2,000 years ago. So how can I lose agency? We didn't leave this country, we stayed here.
Frayer: How has the Gaza war affected your work?
Mansour: We are very much affected by the images that come from Gaza. I'm afraid, really, to do any paintings about Gaza. As a Palestinian I should do more. I'm trying to keep control of my feelings until I can find a way to express them through art.
Frayer: Your paintings hang in museums, and in Palestinian homes around the world, and social media is bringing your paintings to new audiences now. How do you feel about that?
Mansour: Of course I am proud of that, and I love it, but I try to hide it, because knowing you are famous expands your ego very much, and that's very dangerous!
Frayer: Are you really worried about your ego?
Mansour: Not now, I'm too far past that! But for an artist, if your ego becomes too big, you can't learn, you can't do anything new. You get stuck.
For the diaspora, for Palestinians [outside the region] who hang my paintings, I hope they enjoy what they see, and my message to them is, Don't forget Palestine. Come back someday to see it. Visit! Don't forget it. Through my paintings, I can always remind people they have a homeland that is beautiful and worth fighting for.
As for social media, it's important. My son was trying to convince me to get on Instagram. I refused for maybe two years, and started late, but in the end, I accepted. My son runs the account. As a Palestinian artist, how can you reach the whole world? It's through social media.
Frayer: These days, the situation in the West Bank is worsening. Do you still have your grandfather's land?
Mansour: I inherited land in Bir Zeit, and olive groves. I love it, you know? And I'm afraid all the time that the Israelis will confiscate it for settlers — people coming from Manhattan, for example, and taking my land. I'm really afraid. I don't know what to do.
Frayer: Do you think you'll see peace in your lifetime?
Mansour: I wish, but I'm not sure.
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