The Koufia...a symbol of revolutions
By Salim

  The Palestinian Koufia, also known as "Hatta" and  "Solok", reflects in its white and black the simplicity of the Palestinian peasants' life, just like the earthly colors of their clothes, unlike the various colors of the city life which are strange from each other. Peasants used to put the Koufia on to dry their sweat during the plowing and to protect them from summer's hotness and winter's coldness. the Koufia was linked with the national struggle since the 1936 revolution in Palestine, when the revolting peasants used the Koufia to veil their faces while fighting the English soldiers in order not to be recognized by them or to be informed against by others. Later, fighters from cities put it on as a respond to the general command of the revolution, because the English soldiers began to arrest all who put it on, not on faces but even on heads, thinking that they all are revolutionaries. The people of the cities put it on also after being a part of the revolution, but even those who were not revolutionaries put it on so that the soldiers' mission to arrest the revolutionaries would be so difficult. The Koufia was a symbol of the struggle against the British mandate and the immigrant Jews and their gangs. The Koufia is still a symbol of the revolution till the moment, experiencing all stages of the Palestinian struggle.
  At the beginning of contemporary revolution, launched in the late 60s, the Koufia was linked with the revolutionary "Feda'y" exactly like his gun. Since then, the Koufia, to the peoples of the globe, was strongly linked with Palestine and the struggle of her people. This link got stronger during the first Intifada in 1987, and later the second one in 2000, when the revolutionaries put it on for the same reasons and aims of those of the 1936 revolution. Nowadays, we can see that the Koufia , for the free peoples of the globe, becomes a symbol of the national and social struggle. It is present in all Anti-Globalization demonstrations, in manifestations against the interior policy of a government and in the political and cultural activities of students and workers. The Koufia became a tool of struggle for the leftists of the world in their activities, a tool of struggle for democratic and social causes, as the international liberation causes. The Koufia, with its grid and barbwire figures, used to remind of class oppression, then of national oppression, by the Zionists and English soldiers, but later it used to remind of the national and social revolution and the international solidarity and the rejection of the dominant situation…and the fight to change it.