During their stay in Jerusalem, they witnessed distant explosions, the sound of Israeli helicopters over Bethlehem and Rajkowska provoked an incident in the Orthodox district of Mea Sharim when she lay down across a pavement and only stood up when she was about to be hit by an enraged Hassidic Jew.

[8] Rajkowska was also impacted by a postcard found by Żmijewski in the Old Town in Yerushalayim, which featured a bare hill, a single palm tree and the words “Greetings from Hebron”.

They also produced a sense of profound anxiety linked to Rajkowska’s family history, which included her father and grandmother’s escape from a train bound for Auschwitz.

De Gaulle Roundabout itself is an important intersection, located by the former Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, which became Warsaw Stock Exchange following the fall of Communism in 1989.

During the Second World War, there were numerous Nazi round-ups and murders of Polish civilians in the area and transports of prisoners to the Gestapo Detention Centre on Szucha Avenue.

The 12-meter (36 feet) tall structure is not permanently attached to the ground, instead, it is mounted on an octagonal metal foundation, a so-called grill, weighed down by concrete prefabricates, covered with soil and self-seeding weeds.

The trunk was manufactured in Escondido near San Diego on the Mexican-US border by a company based in Las Vegas and transported to Warsaw via Los Angeles, Houston and Gdynia.

However, as no art institution wanted to assume full responsibility for the project, by 2003 the installation did not have a formalised legal situation and had generated debt due to the unauthorised occupation of public space.

To preserve its existence, the Palm Tree Defense Committee (Komitet Obrony Palmy) was formed, including major figures in the Polish art world.

In 2007, thanks to financial assistance from the National Depository for Securities, the installation underwent a complete makeover, acquired a new structural head as well as leaves that were tested in aerodynamic tunnels at speeds of up to 300 km/h.

In December 2020, to mark the eighteenth anniversary of the installation, MSN opened a Palmiarnia (palm tree house), a temporary mini-exhibition of artefacts significant to the history of the project, located at Nowy Świat 18/20 in the immediate vicinity of De Gaulle Roundabout.

Early publications also emphasised the carnivalesque character of the palm tree and described it as an exotic and playful symbol of the new Poland: a young capitalist country with big hopes in a unified Europe.

Authors have analysed the installation in the context of colonialism and postcolonialism, Polish-Jewish history, memory after the Holocaust, the Polish-Jewish-Palestinian geopolitical triangle, and the emigration of the Jews from Poland to the United States.

In June 2022, on the day preceding the Equality Parade, Polish nationalists stopped at the palm tree during a march organised in the name of Roman Dmowski, a co-founder and chief ideologue of the National Democracy movement in Poland.

During the march, Olszański, mounted on a horse and dressed in a period military uniform, delivered a speech during which he described Rajkowska’s installation as a sign of Polish “national shame” and a “symbol of [foreign] domination.” He demanded the palm tree be removed and replaced with “a great Slavic oak.”[23] Since its inception, the palm tree location has become a prominent site for political and social activists, including women, nurses, LGBTQ+ communities, environmental activists, protesters against the war in Ukraine and other groups.

Based on an idea from Polish philosopher, political activist and author Ewa Alicja Majewska, the palm tree was dressed in an oversized nurse’s bonnet as a sign of solidarity and as a message to politicians concerning the oppressive and economically-discriminatory system underpinning their employment.

The transformation (a project commissioned by UNEP/GRID-Warsaw Centre and carried out by the artist in collaboration with Syrena Communications, supported by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw) was aimed at drawing attention to air pollution and global climate change as part of various initiatives taken during World Environment Day.

As a reaction, a group of anarchists removed most of the leaves and placed a banner reading “Bread not Games” across the tree to expose social problems in Poland and protest the populist use of the project.

On November 11, 2019, during nation-wide protests against the gradual dismantling of the democratic system, a huge banner with a sign “Konstytucja” was placed on the palm tree by the informal civic movement Obywatele RP (Citizens of Poland) only to be almost immediately taken down by the police.

[32] In June 2018, during the Equality Parade in Warsaw, the art collective Czarne szmaty (Black Rags) staged a happening in front of the palm tree.

Four members, dressed in bathing suits, performatively claimed the site for several hours by renaming it the island of “Lesbos” while reading poems by Sapho, Elizabeth Bishop and Adrienne Rich.