Image, Symbol, and Contested Legacy

Photographs of Khaled with a rifle and keffiyeh became globally recognizable, turning an individual militant into a gendered symbol of revolution. That visual afterlife often compresses a complex political history into either admiration or condemnation.

Debates over honoring her continue because the symbol remains inseparable from both Palestinian claims of resistance and attacks on civilian aircraft. The controversy demonstrates how public memory can preserve incompatible accounts of militancy, terrorism, dispossession, and national liberation.