Banksy in the West Bank

By Matt Swagler

In 2001, an anonymous British graffiti artist and all-around public art ruffian named Banksy self-released a book of his work, (or a glossy pamphlet, more appropriately). In the opening pages, he sets aside his trademark puns for a few sentences to lay out a provocative role for street stenciling and graffiti: 

“…Painting pictures seems like a pointless way to spend your time. Your average plumber does more humanity than some git that makes abstract art or paints seaside views full of boats. At least graffiti has a fighting chance of meaning a little more to people. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars and generally is the voice of people who aren’t listened to.”

from Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

There is something about Banksy’s radical form of underdog-urban-populism that, however imperfect, has always been inspiring. This may be especially true for those of us with few formal art skills who, at some point of another, have found haven in a crude cardboard stencil and a can of black spray paint. Our work may never rival the size, quality or visibility of Banksy’s, but that never seemed to be the point. “Like most people, I have a fantasy that all the little powerless losers will gang up together,” he wrote in his second book, Existencilism.

His ability to balance on the precipice of both humor and politics was always a hallmark of the work he sprayed on the walls and monuments in his home town of Bristol. Banksy often applied this wit to challenging militarism, police abuses, surveillance, crass commercialism, the greed of financial sector – and, of course, the illegality of tagging and street art. (Links to pictures of Banksy’s work are provided at the end of this article.)

While most of us are quick to throw up a stencil on any surface momentarily out of police view, Banksy has always taken advantage of the specific settings provided by an urban landscape: street lines and crosswalks that continue over cars and up walls, divers that appear to emerge from actual fountains, altered street signs, stencils next to closed-circuit security cameras that mock surveillance, and crumbling walls and paint splatters turned into a form that he integrates with a stencil.

So, it should come as little surprise that in 2005 Banksy would take his criticism of Israel’s “security barrier,” right to the surface of the concrete barrier itself. The wall, which envelopes and divides the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip prompted the following statement from the artist on his website:

“How illegal is it to vandalize a wall if the wall itself has been deemed unlawful by the International Court of Justice? The Israeli government is building a wall surrounding the occupied Palestinian territories. It stands three times the height of the Berlin wall and will eventually run for over 700km - the distance from London to Zurich. The International Court of Justice last year ruled the wall and its associated regime is illegal. It essentially turns Palestine into the world’s largest open-air prison.”

Travelling to the walled-in Palestinian communities of Bethelehem, Abu Dis and Ramallah that summer, Banksy painted a series of nine images on the concrete, each centered on a motif of escape and the seeming impermeability of the massive partition. Many of the paintings involved children finding ways to pass through the wall: a girl being lifted over by a group of helium balloons, a small boy painting a ladder to the top of the wall that he can climb, children digging holes in the wall to reveal an idyllic beach scene on the other side. (Imagery later underscored by a 2007 Israeli policy that cut off all access to the beaches of the Dead Sea for Palestinians in the West Bank.)

While Banksy was not the first person to alter the wall, his relative degree of international fame afforded greater media coverage than the graffiti that has long been applied by Palestinians. Still, he found that no level of western acclaim would settle the well-armed Israeli Defense Force soldiers standing guard at the wall. He reported one such incident afterward on his website:

Soldier: What the fuck are you doing?

Banksy: You’ll have to wait until it’s finished.

Soldier (to colleagues):  Safeties off.

A spokesperson for Banksy said at the time: “The Israeli security forces did shoot in the air threateningly and there were quite a few guns pointed at him.” Banksy moved quickly to paint the images and left unscathed, but many Palestinians, children included, have been shot and killed by the IDF next to the wall for far less provocative activities.  

By the end of 2007, with 450km of the barrier completed, Banksy returned to Palestine to paint the wall surrounding Bethlehem just before Christmas. In a city where 70% of the working population previously depended on holiday season tourism for employment, the construction of the wall in 2005 had cut tourist visits to just 12% of their previous numbers. Banksy commented that he hoped his visit would encourage others to do the same, or at least draw attention to a city where 65% of the population is now unemployed, largely because of the wall.

However, much had occurred between the two visits. Most notably, in January 2006, Hamas ended nearly four-decades of Fateh party supremacy in Palestinian nation politics by winning the free and democratic Palestinian Legislative Council elections in Gaza. This alone ensured almost immediate US condemnation and a deadly Israeli siege, exacerbated by massive military incursions, which have gone on unabated to the present. Hardly six months later, Israel launched a 33-day massive bombing campaign across Lebanon and a ground invasion in the south of the country. Although eventually repelled by the vastly outgunned Hezbollah forces, the Israeli military left a trail of devastation in its wake.

When Banksy returned to the West Bank alongside other international artists, his new wall paintings dealt squarely with the issues of Israeli repression and Palestinian resistance. Some still exhibited Banksy’s expected humor, like the image of a small girl in a pink dress frisking a well-armed soldier for weapons, a critique of the daily humiliation many Palestinians face at IDF checkpoints scattered across the West Bank and Gaza. Other works took a more somber tone, including that of a dove, olive branch in its beak, clad in a bulletproof vest with a sniper’s sight aimed at the bird’s chest.

However, Banksy’s new subject matter, intentions aside, also provoked a critical response from some of Bethlehem residents, a fact scarcely-documented in either the US or UK. On December 21^st, the Guardian UK reported that a pair of Banksy stencils had been painted over by locals who found aspects of the imagery offensive. The trouble came from the artist’s longstanding use of animals to accentuate certain metaphors for contemporary human relationships. For example, the image of a soldier checking the passport of a donkey, intending to ridicule the absurdity of IDF behavior at checkpoints, was read literally by some residents, including a restaurant owner who stated, “We’re humans here, not donkeys. This is insulting. I’m glad it was painted over.”

Also troubling to some inhabitants was a stencil of a rat, slingshot in hand, ready to hurtle rocks towards an Israeli military watchtower. Elsewhere, Banksy has frequently featured mischievous rats engaged in various high jinks as an allegory for the rebellion of those who are marginalized or disempowered. But in the West Bank, where youth toting slingshots have been shot at by IDF soldiers, the choice of images took on a heightened relevancy that some viewers could not view in a playful light:

“We don’t make jokes about kids who sacrifice their lives for their land,” said shop owner Mike Canawati. “They are not rats - they are lions. I’m sure it’s worth a lot, but it’s not worth more than our dignity.”

Canawati was referring to yet another incident that soured the legacy of Banksy’s last visit. A spokesperson for the artist boasted that a potential US collector had offered $150,000 for a section of the apartheid wall adorned with one of Banksy’s works. The Guardian reported, “She added that the donkey mural was worth tens of thousands of dollars.”

Many of us were left wondering how this spokesperson’s arrogance and Banksy’s purported aims could be so seemingly contradictory. Although the commodification of the actual wall paintings was not a practical reality, it raised uncomfortable questions about Banksy’s recent mounting fame and commercial success. Was it not disgusting to suggest that price tags could be placed on such a wall, when those living in its shadow have seen their lives destroyed by its construction and only wish to see it razed? Were the pieces primarily meant to focus attention on the life of Palestinians in the West Bank, or were they intended to reinforce Banksy’s viability as an irreverent rising star in the art world? 

One would like to give the still pseudo-anonymous tagger the benefit of the doubt, given his history and the powerful content of the work itself. While the paintings were generally supported and left untouched, in a place where resistance and oppression are a part of daily life, questions of visual representation cannot be dealt with lightly and the criticism of the local populace ought to be of central importance for a visiting artist attempting to advocate from the outside.

Still, most crucially, Banksy’s choice of targets and his characterization of the wall as a “disgrace” and a “degrading structure” deserve our support. He knows better than most that “street-art” is always ephemeral and he appeared enthusiastic to report the following interaction with an elder Palestinian in 2005:   

Old man: You paint the wall, you make it beautiful.

Banksy: Thanks.

Old Man: We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall, go home.

On January 23^rd of this year, such aspirations to fell the wall briefly became reality, when Palestinians in Rafah managed to break down part of the barrier separating Gaza from Egypt, a border that has been closed since June of 2007. Residents rushed across to buy supplies impossible to acquire in Gaza, due to an Israeli siege, and to visit with family and loved ones on the other side, before being forced back.

This respite was brief, but let’s hope the next time the wall comes down it remains that way for good.

* Banksy’s recent work can usually be found at: www.banksy.co.uk

For other images of Banksy’s past work, a simple internet search should suffice.

* For images from Banksy’s 2005 visit: arts.guardian.co.uk/pictures/0,,1543331,00.html

* For images from Banksy’s 2007 visit: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7125611.stm

OR visit: guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2007/dec/03/1?picture=331433757 to get a sense of the other work done by international artists during the visit.

* The author is greatly indebted to Electronic Intifada co-founder Nigel Parry’s article on the 2005 visit, entitled “Well-known UK graffiti artist Banksy hacks the Wall” posted 2 September 2005 w/photos and available at: electronicintifada.net/v2/article4153.shtml

* For a critical account of Israeli and Palestinian politics from the 2000 start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada through the end of 2006, the author highly recommends the book Between the Lines, by Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad. If that seems too daunting, a good entry point is Haddad’s article, “Birth Pangs of a New Middle East,” available at: isreview.org/issues/49/birthpangs.shtml

* For commentary and debate on Banksy’s recent triumphs in the commercial art world a simple internet search should again suffice. For a rare interview w/Banksy, albeit from 2003, visit: arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,999712,00.html

* The author would be happy to provide any references or links to verify the facts and events noted in the articles. He may be reached at mattswagler@gmail.com