Iconic Palestinian headscarf outgrows Mideast conflict

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

HEBRON, West Bank (AFP) — Anti-war activists and fashionistas have carried the iconic Palestinian keffiyeh across the globe, but in the West Bank producers of the headscarf are struggling to compete with Chinese imports.

The black-and-white checkered scarf -- which became an international symbol of the Palestinian struggle when Yasser Arafat first sported it in the 1960s -- has since grown into a global phenomenon more and more disconnected from the land and the struggle in which it was born.

The keffiyeh has become standard garb for anti-war activists across the globe and a chic accessory for urban hipsters -- a vaguely subversive, vaguely exotic all-weather neck warmer.

But for Yasser al-Hirbawi, the owner of a keffiyeh factory in the southern West Bank...