1. Handala: a character and icon. “Handala is a character created by Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, who was assassinated while on his way to his publisher’s office in London in 1987. Handala, perpetually ten years old, represents the innocence cut short for the people of Palestine: he faces home, waiting to return. Despite al-Ali’s pacifism and existential guilt at being an artist (“I was always troubled by my inability to protect people. How were my drawings going to defend them?” he once wrote), al-Ali was murdered in cold blood for his comics. The gunman was never caught. Handala lives on today as a symbol of Palestinian resistance”. — @evan_saladbar

2. Love for the First Home. Sign: Ein Al-Hilwa Refugee Camp. Tent: One may get acquainted with so many homes, but longing will always be for the first one.

3. Handala: An Outspoken. Newspaper tile: The Anniversary of the Battle of Hittin. The Good Man: What if Saladin is still alive? - Handala: They would have assassinated him.

4. This bullet refused to be fired against the refugee camps, or participate in the internal Palestinian fighting, or in Lebanon’s civil war, or in the Gulf war [Iraq and Iran]; this bullet is wanted by all other rifles as a suspect of terrorism.

5. Arab Governments Disputes. Directional signs: To the right: America. To the left: United States.

6. Al-Ali Predicting His Own Death. Published 2 weeks before his assassination. Poster: Wanted Dead or alive. Handala Singing: oh my homeland, oh my homeland, for you is my love and my heart.

7. Handala is still alive! Handala in a demonstration in San Francisco, 2004.
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About the artist:

Naji al-Ali (1936-1987) was born in al-Jalil (Galilee), Palestine, in the village of al-Shajara. When the Nakba (catastrophe) struck in 1948, al-Ali became a refugee, along with the vast majority of Palestinians, growing up in the south Lebanese refugee camp of Ain al-Helweh. In 1961, Palestinian writer and political activist Ghassan Kanafani noted the creative artistry of al-Ali and published three of his works in al-Hurriyya magazine. Two years later, al-Ali moved to Kuwait, where he drew for a variety of newspapers over the next eleven years; in 1969, his most celebrated creation, the witness-child Hanthala, appeared for the first time.

Through the gaze of this refugee child with his ragged, patched clothes, al-Ali criticized the brutality of Israeli occupation, the venality and corruption of the regimes in the region, and emphasized the suffering and resistance of the Palestinian people. Resolutely independent and unaligned to any political party, he strove to speak to and for the ordinary Arab people; the pointed satire of his stark, symbolic cartoons brought him widespread renown, many powerful enemies, and the respect of a wide audience both in Palestine and throughout the Arab world.

In 1974, Naji returned to Lebanon, where he witnessed the civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion. Moving back to Kuwait Naji took up a post with the daily newspaper al-Qabas. Constantly harassed and censored by the authorities, Naji was finally expelled from the country; relocating to London, where he continued to draw for the international edition of al-Qabas. On 22July 1987, he was shot outside the newspaper's Chelsea offices, dying five weeks later. He was posthumously awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom award of the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEJ).

Naji al-Ali's cartoons remain as relevant and popular as ever. A Child in Palestine presents, for the first time in book form, the work of one of the Arab world's greatest cartoonists, revered throughout the region for his outspokenness, honesty and humanity.
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Source: A CHILD IN PALESTINE. The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali (2009).

Images: http://www.askdryahya.com/Naji-alaliHanzala.pdf