Hebron, Palestinian Territories - In the face of strong competition from China, the traditional, locally produced Palestinian headscarf has put up a show of resistance, successfully pulling itself back from the brink of extinction.
Thanks to the business sense of two brothers from the southern West Bank city of Hebron, the traditional black-and-white keffiyeh headscarf has discovered a new lease of life.
In 1961, their father Yasser Hirbawi, who sold keffiyehs he brought from Syria and Jordan, decided to set up his own production line.
When the factory began, two employees managed two looms to produce the famous black-and-white patterned headscarf.
Today, his sons are at the head of a business which employs 15 people and exports keffiyehs worldwide, all of them bearing the logo: Made in Palestine.
Each year, they sell around 30,000 scarves, of which two or three percent are sold locally while the rest go overseas with the main markets in Italy, France and Germany, most of which are ordered online, according to Juda Hirbawi.
Paradoxically, it was the British who turned the keffiyeh into a widespread symbol of resistance during the time of Palestine under their mandate (1920-1948), says Abdelaziz al-Karaki, 61, who has spent more than four decades working in the Hirbawi factory.
"They said that anyone who wore the Bedouin scarf was an opponent and suddenly everyone started wearing them," he said.
But the keffiyeh's appearance on the international scene can be put down to the influence of one man: Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader and icon of the resistance who was hardly ever pictured without his trademark headscarf.
AFP
