Palestinian territories

Stop decorating the “wall of shame”

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:01:19 +0200

Graffiti by Suleiman Mansour. Photo by William J.Schleich, posted here.

Better to employ an enormous grey wall for artistic purposes than leave it a towering eyesore? Palestinians and foreigners alike have been painting the Israeli government's separation wall since construction began. But on both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides of what has been dubbed "the wall of shame", there are those who don't want it to be coloured in, and for very different reasons.

Israel began building the snaking wall which separates the West Bank from neighbouring Jewish settlements in 2002. Its alleged purpose is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from accessing Israeli territory and then blowing themselves up. But despite the outright condemnation of the project from the UN in October 2003, since then, the wall has only got longer.

When slogans and stencils began to appear on the wall, the initial reaction from Israeli soldiers was to arrest the offending artists. Their excuse? Security measures. Barbed wire, sensors and CCTV were put in place to deter them. But to no avail. Much of the graffiti is found on the sections which cross Bethlehem, Qalqilya, and Qalandiya (a village 11km south of Ramallah), but also on parts opposite the University of Jerusalem, which managed, after negotiations, to save a piece of its campus from being built upon by this controversial structure.

A floating 'separation wall' in Tel Aviv

Team Observers — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:41:50 +0200

Israeli artist Shelly Federman created this curious structure that resembles the West Bank separation wall... Except that it's made of Styrofoam and can be used as a floating mattress.

Federman's "Floating Wall" exhibit was filmed on the beach at Tel Aviv and set up as a video exhibit at the Art TLV biennial, a three-week-long happening that took place in Tel Aviv in September. The controversial piece, intended to draw attention to the "complex realities of life in Israel", was a centerpiece for the city's art show. Federman told FRANCE 24 what inspired her to create the wall, and how her fellow Israelis reacted to the exhibit.

Photos by Shelly Federman

If you should really kick a ball over the separation wall…

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:30:00 +0200

In response to the controversial ad from Israeli telecoms company Cellcom, in which Israelis and Palestinians strike up a game of footy across the separation wall, residents from the Palestinian side have come up with their own version. Unlike the original however, there are no actors; only real citizens. So what would really happen if Palestinians kicked a ball across the wall?

The scene takes place in Bil'in, where weekly demonstrations are held to protest the wall. The author of the clip, an Israeli citizen, explains the scenario to us.

Separation wall - not a laughing matter

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:44:26 +0200

Light-hearted it may seem, but the latest ad from Israeli telecommunications company Cellcom is plain offensive for many in the region. The scene shows IDF soldiers playing football with (unseen) Palestinians, across the separation wall. A concept which, according to its critics, ridicules the Palestinians' situation.

The videos that shame Israel

Team Observers — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:13:22 +0200

This humiliating video belongs to a collection of clips that officers from the Israeli Border Police have posted on YouTube. The clips, posted over the last year, show shocking evidence of abuse of Palestinians at the hands of security forces. Despite being posted on YouTube, the clips have not until now raised eyebrows.

The videos were brought to the public eye on Friday by Israeli left-leaning daily Haaretz. Listed in the "comedy" section on the video sharing site, the clips had been viewed over 2,500 times. In most of the footage the faces of the police are not seen and the surroundings are unidentifiable.

Created in 1949, the Israeli Border Police is also a counter-terrorist and riot-control force. Despite their name, there are more border police officers found in the occupied West Bank and in cities like Jerusalem and Bethlehem than on the border itself. Alongside the rural police, they also patrol settlements.

Palestinian man killed by teargas canister

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:03:12 +0200

Photo: Lazar Simeonov

A Palestinian man died on Friday after he was hit in the chest by a teargas canister launched by an Israeli soldier. The scene was filmed by a protester.

The demonstration took place in Bilin, a Palestinian village that lies next to the security wall put in place by Israel. Israeli forces say they fired tear gas after protesters started throwing stones. The man, who was knocked down and died soon after, was 30-year-old Basem Ibrahim Abu Rahma. His brother, Ashraf Abu Rahma, was also the victim of an Israeli bavure in July 2008.

A tourist outing in… Gaza

Ségolène Team Observers — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:26:06 +0200

Nearly three months after the end of the Israeli assault on Gaza, a 20-year-old blogger has decided to film a "tourist visit" of the Strip on her mobile phone. A way for her to give a different view of Gaza, where life goes on.

The operation "Cast Lead" launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip last December flattened some 4,000 houses and left more than 900 civilians dead (figures published by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights).

Yet, despite the heavy toll, Lina Al-Sharif is persuaded the place where she lives, complete with leisure parc, equestrian centre and boat trips, is ready to become a tourist destination.

The far-right, the Arabs, and the police

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:18:07 +0100

A radical far-right group marched through the Israeli Arab city of Umm al-Fahm on Tuesday, causing an outbreak of rioting and clashes with the police. The group arrived in armour plated vehicles, was banned from carrying weapons and allowed a maximum of 30 minutes in the north western town, where almost 100% of residents are of Arab origin. Twenty-eight people were injured and 13 arrested.

Video posted on YouTube by "fardavari".

Jews and Europe

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:51:57 +0100

This comment was sent to us by Joel Schalit, one of our Observers for Europe. It was also published on Jewcy.com.

To say that Jews have a complex relationship with Europe would be a gross understatement.

Nevertheless, since the end of the era of decolonisation in the 1960s, when France and the United Kingdom divested themselves of most of their former territorial holdings, European feelings about Israel underwent a transformation. Once regarded as a typically post-WWII liberated zone, somewhere in between the West and the Middle East, since 1967's Six-Day War, Israel's ongoing territorial struggles, and its policies towards the Palestinians came to embody everything that post-war Europe was trying to dissociate itself from.

This change in popular opinion about the Jewish state has traditionally been understood by many Jews to be motivated by racism. Similarly, this shift has always smacked of the worst kind of hypocrisy. How could the Europeans adopt such a position towards us given that they invented modern colonialism, and were the perpetrators of multiple acts of genocide, not just against Jews, but also against countless other indigenous peoples under their rule? Sadly, the European experience of Nazism, and the rise of liberalism in Western Europe after the Second World War has never been enough to explain this to us.

The advent of large-scale Muslim immigration to Europe since the 1960s has done little to mitigate such criticisms. If the Europeans weren't anti-Semitic hypocrites seeking to displace their own post-colonial guilt onto our shoulders, they were surely under the influence of their new Muslim populations, increasingly radicalised over the years by their deepening religiosity. The European equivalent of America's Jewish population, of course they would influence European opinion strongly. Considering EU relations with wealthy Arab states, the situation becomes that much more transparent, or so the story goes.

These sorts of anxieties are to be expected, but the situation has always been far more complex. Anti-Semitism still exists, but it is by no means the only explanation. That Europe would turn out to be a place of greater debate about Israeli foreign policy, albeit one of conflict over it, given its history, is beyond question. However, anti-Semitism is not a fact of European state policy, and has not been since the Second World War. Jews, similarly, are more enfranchised within European society than ever. Just look at the cabinet members of the present British and French governments, or the growth of Germany's Jewish population as examples. Or, for that matter, all of these states' support for Israel, despite the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, and despite the fact that popular opinion in many EU states is extremely critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Completing a book last autumn here in London, which addresses, in part, Israel's struggles with Europe (and vice versa) I have spent a great deal of my free time taking pictures of local Israel-related graffiti, and in addition, in Italy, where my wife and I are about to move. As disturbing as some of these pictures are, shooting them provided a perverse kind of relief from the abstraction of writing about the politics we instinctively attribute to such difficult signs and symbols. Not all of them, might I add, are negative, either. Israel, or so it appears, is more a part of Europe than ever. If I could somehow distil it all down to a single memory card, or so I continue to believe, perhaps I'll get an eventual handle on it all.

Brixton Market, London.

Israel postcards displayed in kiosk. Near Dei Transite, central Milan.

Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Milan. Azione Giovani is the youth movement of Italy's far-right National Alliance. Like many contemporary conservative Europan parties, the NA professes support for Israel, but, as in the case of this poster, suggests a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Brick Lane, London.

And if Hamas rockets were to reach Tel Aviv?

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:13:28 +0100

After 22 days of war, 1,300 Palestinian and 14 Israeli deaths, Israel and Hamas have agreed, on either side, to a ceasefire. Was so much bloodshed necessary to end the hostilities? For two Sderot students at least, the rockets were becoming insufferable, and it was only a matter of time before Hamas Qassams would be landing in Tel Aviv.

As part of their studies at Sapir University near Sderot, Yatir Keren and Ron Rochman created an artistic project with the aim of illustrating the daily lives of those living under target of Hamas rockets in southern Israel. The narrative behind the project - entitled 'Distance Is Only a Matter of Time': a rocket launched from Gaza reaches Tel Aviv.