Sumud (صمود) is the Arabic word Palestinians use for a particular kind of endurance — not protest, not defiance, but the quiet refusal to disappear. It is the farmer who tends his olive grove under occupation, the craftsperson who keeps weaving when there's almost no market left, the factory that...
Sumud (صمود) doesn't translate cleanly into English. Its meaning is usually given as "steadfastness" or "resilience," but neither word carries the full weight of what Palestinians mean when they say it. Sumud is quieter than resistance and more deliberate than survival. It is the refusal to disappear.
The closest translation of sumud in English is "steadfastness" — but that word lacks the texture of the original. Sumud in English is sometimes rendered as resilience, persistence, or rootedness. None quite captures it.
In Arabic, صمود (sumud) comes from the root ص م د (ṣ-m-d), meaning to be firm, to endure, to persist. It appears in the Quran in the sense of being solid and unmoving. In modern Arabic — and specifically in Palestinian Arabic — sumud meaning has evolved into something more specific: a philosophy of staying. Remaining where you are. Tending what you have. Refusing to be erased.
In everyday Palestinian life, sumud doesn't look like protest or confrontation. It looks like a farmer who tends his olive grove under occupation. Like a family who stays in a house despite every pressure to leave. Like a craftsperson who keeps weaving on a loom that has almost no market left. Sumud is presence as an act of resistance.
The philosopher Sari Nusseibeh has described sumud as "a steadfast attachment to the land and to life on the land." The writer Raja Shehadeh, who coined the phrase 'Palestinian walks' to describe hiking through a disappearing landscape, calls it a way of being fully alive to the place you inhabit even as it is being taken from you.
The Arabic root of Sumud — ص م د (ṣ-m-d) — carries a sense of solidity and permanence. The same root appears in Surah Al-Ikhlas (112:2): اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ — "Allah is Al-Samad," meaning the Eternal, the Absolute, the one on whom all depend. In Islamic tradition, Al-Samad (الصمد) is one of the 99 names of God, signifying self-sufficiency and enduring permanence.
This theological root gives Sumud meaning in Islam a particular depth: to practice sumud is to embody a quality that is, in Islamic thought, divine — to be rooted, self-sustaining, and unshakeable. For Palestinian Muslims, this connection between the spiritual concept and the political reality of staying on the land is not incidental. It is part of why the word carries such weight.
In Palestine specifically, Sumud meaning has always been tied to land. To be sumud is to be of a place — attached to it, responsible for it, unwilling to leave it regardless of pressure.
The word itself is old, but sumud as a political and cultural concept crystallised in the years following the Nakba of 1948 — the displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes during the establishment of the State of Israel. For those who remained inside what became Israel, and for those in the West Bank and Gaza who stayed on the land, the act of staying became its own form of statement.
In the 1970s, Palestinian intellectuals and the Palestine Liberation Organisation began using sumud more formally — first as a social welfare concept (the PLO's Steadfastness Fund provided financial support to Palestinians remaining under occupation), then as a broader cultural identity. To be sumud was to be undeniably Palestinian.
After the Oslo Accords of 1993, some Palestinian thinkers distinguished between a "passive" sumud — simply enduring — and an "active" sumud: building institutions, sustaining culture, creating economic life under occupation as a form of daily resistance. This distinction matters. Sumud is not passivity. It is intentional, eyes-open persistence.
In Palestine the meaning of Sumud is embedded in material culture — in the objects people make, keep, and pass on. Three things in particular carry its meaning:
An ancient Palestinian olive tree
A Olive Wood Misbaha, prayer beads combine the sacredness of the olive tree and a celebratory dimension of Palestinian culture.
→ See authentic olive wood accessories made in Palestine
The olive tree is the most enduring symbol of sumud. Palestinian olive trees live for hundreds — sometimes thousands — of years. Families have tended the same groves across generations, with ownership tracked through oral history and memory rather than documents. The destruction of olive trees has long been used as a form of collective punishment under occupation; the continued tending of them is an assertion of belonging. When Palestinians speak of sumud, the olive tree is almost always in the background.
The black-and-white kufiya — the Palestinian keffiyeh — became the de facto flag of Palestine from 1967 to 1993, when Israel banned the actual Palestinian flag in Gaza and the West Bank. To wear one was to refuse erasure. Today the kufiya remains a symbol of solidarity and cultural pride, but for Hirbawi — the last factory in Palestine still weaving them — it is also a living expression of sumud. The factory has been operating since 1961. It survived globalisation, the Oslo Accords, and the near-total collapse of the local textile industry. It is still here.
Hirbawi Black & White Kufiya in the traditional Palestinian colourway
Hirbawi factory - weaving kufiyas in Al Khalil Palestine since 1961
→ Every kufiya from Hirbawi is woven in Palestine — not abroad. Shop the collection.
Tatreez (تطريز), the traditional embroidery of Palestine, is another carrier of sumud. Each village historically had its own patterns, colours, and stitching conventions. Women embroidered those patterns into dresses, panels, and household objects — keeping the visual vocabulary of a specific place alive even after displacement. For Palestinian women in refugee camps and diaspora communities, tatreez has been a form of memory-work: stitching the landscape back into existence, one stitch at a time.
Palestinian tatreez embroidery - stitching memory into fabric
Tatreez inspired Tote Bag, made in Palestine
→ See more tatreez embroidered products in Palestine
When we launched Sumud Stories — a collection of handcrafted Palestinian goods made by Palestinian artisans — the name was a deliberate choice. Not 'artisan collection.' Not 'made in Palestine.' Sumud Stories.
Each piece in the collection is made by a craftsperson who is still here: a jeweller working with locally sourced brass and silver, embroiderers keeping tatreez patterns from specific villages alive, weavers whose craft is tied to a land they have not left. The collection isn't nostalgia. It is proof of presence.
Sumud Stories - handcrafted Palestinian jewelry and accessories
Buying a piece from Sumud Stories is a transaction with a specific person in a specific place. That is what sumud looks like in commerce: economic life as a form of staying.
→ Explore Sumud Stories — handcrafted Palestinian goods, jewellery, and accessories made in Palestine.
In recent years, the word Sumud has travelled beyond its Palestinian context. Scholars of post-colonial studies, liberation theology, and social movements have adopted it to describe a mode of resistance that operates through presence and persistence rather than confrontation. Indigenous land defenders around the world have recognised in Sumud something familiar: the refusal to accept disappearance.
This global resonance is partly why the word has entered English-language discourse relatively intact — its meaning is better preserved in the original Arabic than translated away. When you understand the word fully, the English substitutes feel thin.
Since October 2023, Palestinian Sumud has been in the global spotlight in a way it hasn't been for decades. The images coming from Gaza and the West Bank — of people returning to destroyed homes to cook on the rubble, of journalists broadcasting with dust still on their faces, of children drawing maps of villages that no longer exist — are all expressions of the same concept. Sumud is not hope in the optimistic sense. It is something harder and more honest: the decision to remain present, to keep making, to keep being.
For those of us outside Palestine, engaging with Sumud is partly an act of witness. To understand the word is to understand something essential about why Palestinian culture — its crafts, its food, its music, its stories — has not only survived but accumulated meaning over 75 years of displacement and occupation.
Wearing a Hirbawi Kufiya - made by people who chose to stay
The Hirbawi factory has been weaving kufiyas in Hebron since 1961. It is the last Palestinian-owned kufiya factory in existence. Every scarf that leaves it is made by workers who are still there, on machines that are still running, in a city that is still producing. That is sumud — not as a slogan, but as a loom still turning.
When you wear a Hirbawi kufiya, you are wearing something made by people who chose to stay and to keep making. That's a story worth knowing.
→ Shop authentic Palestinian kufiyas — made at the last factory in Palestine.
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