Abstract
ABSTRACT This study examines the meanings young Palestinians attribute to the shahīd as an icon. Our analysis is based on anthropological fieldwork carried out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank (from now on WB-OPT) between 2007 and 2008, with a follow-up in 2017. We begin our article by considering the shahīd against the backdrop of previous Palestinian icons, such as the sāmid and the child of the stone. We then show how the shahīd symbolizes contrasting connotations: It is both a religious and a secular icon, one standing for a hero as well as a victim and one understood to denote an active agent as well as a powerless person whose death was accidental. It is an icon of diverging interpretations and internal tensions. This implosion of meanings, alongside local, Middle Eastern and global influences within the WB-OPT, may have impacted what seems like a decline in the icon’s role.
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