Will Palestinian Artists Run out of Wall?

Osama Silwadi/Gamma

There's something about a 26 ft high wall of concrete, unspooling across the Biblical hills, through villages and olive groves, that brings out the artist in just about anybody. And, if you happen to be a Palestinian, much of your life is spent waiting in the gloomy shadows of this wall with your frustration and anger mounting. Even better if you happen to have a modicum of artistic talent and a can of spray paint hidden in your coat.

On the Bethlehem side of the wall, someone has painted a pair of giant scissors cutting along a dotted line, as if this slab of concrete were as flimsy as a newspaper coupon. Near Ramallah, another artist has fashioned a cartoon man with a sledgehammer knocking holes in it. Banksy, the phantom British graffiti master, is credited with another creation: a glimpse of paradise seen through a painted hole in the wall. Some concrete-headed realists criticize Banksy for turning something as monstrous as this wall into a work of art.

I disagree. Every Palestinian I've talked to about the graffiti sees it as an act of defiance, one that buoys their spirits enough to make it past the gum-smacking Israeli teenagers at the security barrier. (One friend told me it speeds things up if you compliment the girl soldiers on their blue eye shadow. Warning: this doesn't work for the Russian emigre soldiers whose eyes may be rimmed in blue but their hearts are solid concrete, like a chunk off the wall.)

But an item in today's “Jerusalem Post” caught my eye. It claimed that the Israeli government has exhausted its budget for building the 790 km wall or, as the Israelis like to describe it, “security fence", intended to divide Palestinians from Israelis. No progress has been made since July in this supposedly suicide bomber-proof fence. Israeli officials say that the wall is ugly, and some might privately admit that it hasn't made the Israelis any friends among thousands of Palestinians who are cut off from their fields, schools, jobs and hospitals. But they argue that it has prevented all but a few suicide bombers from crossing into Israel, and that is worth the blight on the Biblical landscape and the inconvenience to ordinary Palestinians.

The cut-off in funds doesn't mean that Palestinian graffiti artists are going to run out of concrete canvas any time soon. So far, 340 kms of the wall have been built, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office says that the bulldozers and cement mixers will start up once again next year, unless some political solution is reached at the upcoming Israeli-Arab peace summit in Annapolis, and the wall building will stop. The prospect of any breakthrough looks doubtful. That may be a boon to graffiti artists, bad news to everybody else.

By Tim McGirk/Ramallah