Room IV · National Biography
The Portrait Wing
A biographical archive of every sovereign Palestinian head of state, hung in order of accession. Visitors have complained that the portraits are difficult to make out. The Curator has had the lighting examined. The lighting is not the difficulty.
Department of Levantine Biography · Condition report: there are some lighting issues · Last acquisition: pending
Room I · Portraits hung: 0 of 4
The Founders and the Statesmen
Room II · Portraits hung: 0 of 4
The Treasury, the Bench, and the Embassy
Room II is reached through Room I. Several visitors have remarked that Room II is the darker of the two. The Curator has measured the illumination in both rooms and found it identical.
1 Room II, frame i. A Palestine Monetary Authority has existed since 1994. Under the Protocol on Economic Relations signed at Paris that year, the introduction of a Palestinian currency was reserved for further discussion between the parties. The discussion continues. See Currency.
2 Room II, frame iv. The General Assembly accorded Palestine the status of non-member observer State in 2012 (resolution 67/19). The accession committee has considered the phrase non-member observer State at three successive meetings and referred it to a fourth. An application for the membership the frame requires was put to the Security Council on 18 April 2024. It did not pass.
Department of Levantine Biography · File Card
Catalogue entry. Portrait, head of state, sovereign, Palestinian. Sittings to date: none.
Sitter Not Located
The Department of Levantine Biography accepts portrait submissions from accredited national archives. A submission must establish the subject's tenure as a sovereign Palestinian head of state: a constitutional warrant of appointment, an oath administered in the name of a sovereign Palestinian polity, and credentials accepted by third-party sovereigns. The full standard is published under Submissions; the Department's standing search of the documentary record is logged in the Archives, where it returns zero results with complete reliability.
To date, the following institutions have not returned the Department's correspondence:
| Institution | Status of correspondence |
|---|---|
| National Library of Palestine | Letters unreturned |
| Presidential Palace, Jerusalem | Address unverified |
| National Mint of Palestine | Institution not located |
| State Portrait Commission | Commission not constituted |
| Office of the Royal Chronicler | Office not constituted |
| Department of Heraldry | Coat of arms pending |
The Gallery is updated quarterly. The most recent accession was completed on [no record].
The Claimants
An Annex, for the Administrators
The Gallery is aware that authority over portions of the territory has been claimed, and in places exercised, since 1948 — the fourteen sovereignties before that being the business of Ancient Origins. Ḥajj Amīn al-Ḥusaynī presided over an "All-Palestine Government" proclaimed at Gaza in September 1948; it conducted its affairs from Cairo and was dissolved by Egypt in 1959. Yāsir ʿArafāt chaired the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1969 until his death in 2004. Maḥmūd ʿAbbās was elected President of the Palestinian Authority on 9 January 2005, to a term the Basic Law fixes at four years.3 He is at present in year twenty-one of it.
The registry of these claimants — offices held, territory actually administered — is maintained in Government & State, and the eight occasions on which the first frame might have been filled are scored on the Timeline. The Gallery's accession standards require a sovereign head of state, and the wall therefore remains as supplied. The Curator notes, for completeness, that the claimant nearest to qualifying has now held a four-year office for twenty-one years — a record of a kind, though not the kind the Gallery collects.
3 Article 36 of the Palestinian Basic Law fixes the President's term at four years. Maḥmūd ʿAbbās was elected on 9 January 2005. No presidential election has been held since.
Adjoining Gallery
A Note on the Athletes' Wing
A national gallery conventionally hangs the captains of its sporting sides among the statesmen. In the case of Mandate Palestine, the side existed and the photographs survive.
The Palestine Football Association was founded in 1928 by Yosef Yekutieli of the Maccabi sports movement. It joined FIFA in 1929. Its national team — pictured here on its first international fixture — was Jewish, top to bottom. So were the squads it sent to the qualifying rounds of the 1934 and 1938 FIFA World Cups.
In 1948 the Association renamed itself the Israel Football Association. It is the same body.
- The "Palestinian" football team that played in the qualifying rounds of the 1934 and 1938 World Cups was composed entirely of Jewish players.
- The Arab clubs withdrew from the Palestine Football Association in 1934, citing the imposition of Hebrew and the scheduling of fixtures on the Jewish Sabbath.
- The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1936 as the Palestine Symphony. The Jerusalem Post was founded in 1932 as the Palestine Post. The Israel Electric Corporation was founded in 1923 as the Palestine Electric Company. The pattern holds.
A portrait gallery is a chronicle in the strict sense. Where the record does not affirm, the wall remains as the record finds it.