As the national flower of the State of Palestine, the Faqqu’a Iris, a vulnerable species, stands as a living mark of a peoples’ relationship to Land – an enduring response to state sanctioned violence.
Every year the Iris haynei, locally called the Faqqu’a Iris, covers the foothills of the mountain range of the Jordan Rift Valley. The flower’s perennial return brings to light how the fight for self-determination is inseparable from the fight to nurture culture and community, and the unique ecologies that sustain both.
Among those who hold the iris in deep reverence is Mufid Jalghoum, a lifelong resident of Faqqu’a and author dedicated to uplifting the story of the flower’s significance. Jalghoum reflects not only on the flower’s beauty and ecological rarity, but also on what it represents to the people of Faqqu’a and the Palestinian diaspora: a consistent relationship between people and place generations in the making, and a spark of resilience, despite being a kinship that has long been under threat.
The construction of the Israeli separation wall (spanning 709 kilometers) fragments and degrades the delicate mountainous habitats where the iris grows, just as it reinforces a system of violence against the communities living alongside expanding settlements. The physical violence perpetuated by Israeli forces, who have targeted Palestinians walking among groves of olive trees and prickly pears near the fence, is compounded by the ecological disruption threatening flora and fauna – ecologies central to Palestinian’s rootedness in the landscape, as well as economies emerging in honour of region’s unique biodiversity. These acts form part of a broader pattern of dispossession, aimed at limiting a people’s autonomy; severing Palestinians from their ancestral lands and the landscapes that shape their past, present, and future.
Violence inflicted on communities and lands are inseparable.
And yet, amid this violence, there remains a continued affirmation of belonging within the ecological fabric of the land, and land belonging within the fabric of community.
The blooming of the Faqqu’a Iris – and the care it receives from stewards like Jalghoum – becomes an act of defiance as much as devotion, a living declaration of belonging. In the flower’s endurance, we glimpse the broader Palestinian struggle: an insistence on the right to remain, and to return to a land that has sustained peoples for generations. To protect ecosystems so deeply woven into a people’s identity is to safeguard their future. In that future, human security, ecological flourishing, and the self-determined stewardship of intimately known landscapes are inseparable.
