Description
During the Qatar FIFA World Cup (2022), the Palestinian flag became a recurring symbol of collective resistance. Fans, players, and workers from multiple nations displayed the flag on terraces, in tunnels, during matches, and before television cameras. This paper argues that the flag operated as a mobile political imaginary that changed a tightly managed global football spectacle into a theatre of transnational solidarity. It foregrounds the flag’s visual and affective power as central to understanding the movement of images, the mobilisation of emotion, and the reconfiguration of global politics from below.
The study examines televised footage, social media content, and audience accounts to explore the circulation and use of the Palestinian flag. It identifies four interlinked dynamics that explain the flag’s capacity to redefine global political imagination. First, stadiums became arenas of people’s diplomacy where solidarity was performed through visibility. Second, digital platforms amplified these visual moments by extending their affective reach beyond the physical event. Third, African audiences connected the Palestinian struggle to liberation memories rooted in anti-colonial and apartheid-era experiences. Fourth, Qatar’s hosting reconstituted the region’s image by merging state-driven narratives of Arab unity with bottom-up visual performances of defiance.
The paper advances scholarship on visual geopolitics by demonstrating that affect, memory, and shared vulnerability are political forces in international relations. It challenges state-centric models of diplomacy by showing that ordinary spectators and athletes generate solidarity through visual performance. The findings reveal that mega-events create spaces for counter-hegemonic expression, even under strict control, and that visual economies merit closer attention in understanding political mobilisation across the Global South.
Keywords: Palestinian flag; visual geopolitics; mobile political imaginary; decolonial aesthetics; FIFA World Cup; transnational solidarity; people diplomacy
