Colors of Resilience

A Visual Archive of Palestinian Children's Art from the First Intifada

In the months following the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987, a Canadian photographer named Roberto traveled to Palestine. He visited schools and refugee camps with a single instruction: invite the children to draw.

They drew what they knew. What they feared. What they hoped for.

He returned with hundreds of drawings — unfiltered, unedited, and entirely their own. Over the years that followed, these images were exhibited at solidarity events and commemorations across the diaspora, then carefully preserved in their original form, untouched, exactly as the children had made them.

Years later, when the collection was shared with Jude, the answer was immediate: these drawings belong in a book.

More than thirty-five years after they were created, efforts were made to trace the children who had become adults. Some had been martyred. Others had spent years behind bars. Out of respect for their safety and privacy, no further contact was made.

This book is for them — and because of them.

Colors of Resilience is not a coffee table book. It is a record. It is testimony. It is what happens when children are handed paper and told the truth matters — and it does.

What's Inside:

• Hundreds of original drawings by Palestinian children, preserved without alteration
• Art created during one of the most defining periods in modern Palestinian history
• A rare, unmediated look at how children lived, processed, and documented their reality