WE’VE been seeing the fruit featured in social media posts across the internet ever since the Gaza invasion began 20 days ago. As of today, over 7,000 Palestinians have been killed, including around 3,000 children, and over 17,000 people have been wounded so far in ongoing Israeli retaliatory strikes.
The use of the watermelon as a Palestinian symbol is not new. It first emerged in 1967, when Israel seized control of the West Bank and Gaza and annexed East Jerusalem. Following this, the Israeli government used a military order to make public displays of the Palestinian flag a criminal offence in Gaza and the West Bank.