DescriptionThe original oil painting by artist Ismail Shammout was created in 1989, and titled "A Salute to Bait Sahour: The resistance of people of Bait Sahour against the Israeli government". On display in the museum is a reproduced print of the work. In 1989, during the First Intifada, the Palestinian resistance urged people to stop paying taxes to Israel, "No taxation without representation," said a statement from the organizers. The people of Beit Sahour responded to this call with an organized citywide tax strike that included refusal to pay and file tax returns. As a punishment, the Israeli government placed the town under curfew for 42 days, blocked food shipments into the town, cut telephone lines, tried to bar reporters from entering, imprisoned ten residents and seized in house-to-house raids millions of dollars in money and property belonging to 350 families. The Israeli government also imposed taxes on Palestinians as collective punishment measures to discourage the Intifada, for instance "the glass tax (for broken windows), the stones tax (for damage done by stones), the missile tax (for Gulf War damage), and a general Intifada tax", among others. Ismail Shammout was born in 1930 in Lydda, Palestine. During the Nakba of 1948, he and his family were forcibly expelled, finally settling in Khan Younis refugee camp (Gaza). Shammout passed away in 2006.