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A wall

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Separation wall

It’s funny there’s a sidewalk here. I walked with my finger tips touching the huge blocks of the great, made-to-scare-me wall. I didn’t look at the graffiti; I know it very well. The sky was halfway eaten by the wall, and the sun was no better. I stumbled with a stone, which was probably thrown by some of my friends yesterday. I sat down where I stumbled and grabbed the stone, stared at it for a minute, and threw it to the other side of the wall. I listened for an aw, a curse word, footsteps , a call, a whisper, or a gun shot. Nothing. I kept on walking. It didn’t seem to end. My finger tips were now colored with all dry paint colors. I stopped. Turned my face to the wall. Put both my hands on it. I pushed. I kept pushing, my arms straight, my teeth stressed, my legs rooted to the ground, the paint of the graffiti’s smell going through my lungs, the man on the other sidewalk stopping to see what will come out of this. My feet started backing the other way. A sound from inside me broke out to a scream. I collapsed to the ground crying. And, the man on the other sidewalk giggled and went on walking.

(Crossposted at Rawan Yaghi’s blog We Resist)

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The wall always strikes me as so ironic. Jews out of the WWII ghettos, built themselves another ghetto in Israel.

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The wall used to confiscate more Palestinian land.

http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?pr=71&code=mwp&p1=3&p2=4&p3=6&ca

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Moving piece. The mention of the grafitti reminds me of this story about street artist Banksy.

see: http://www.briansewell.com/artist/b-artist/banksy/banksy-palestinian-tag.html

[be sure to check out the pictures in the link if you haven’t already seen them]

Banksy’s site offers two snippets of conversations with an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian who happened upon him while he was in the process of creating the series of nine pieces on the Wall, in Bethlehem, Abu Dis, and Ramallah.

Soldier: What the fuck are you doing?

Me: You’ll have to wait til it’s finished

Soldier (to colleagues): Safety’s off

Banksy is the anti-Leni Riefenstahl and anti-Richard Wagner, reclaiming public spaces as a space for public imagination and enlightenment where they have become propagandistic barriers to thought and awareness, as is the very terminology for Israel’s West Bank barrier itself. Banksy’s summer project on Israel’s Wall stands out as one of the most pertinent artistic and political commentaries in recent memory.

Perhaps the last word, perhaps the clearest answer to the Nathan Edelsons of this world who wish to whitewash all that is ugly rather than change its basic nature, should come from another conversation Banksy reports having with an old Palestinian man:

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

Me: Thanks

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

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Throughout Rawan’s writing, one can find the deep narrative of Palestine.

Keep telling the story.

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Mainly due to israel, Gaza is living a hell, the siege, the aggression, the murder, the crimes, the lack of almost everything (except dignity; Gaza has plenty of that). However, we I think of the miserable conditions of the West Bank. I come to believe that the situation there is much much worse than it is in Gaza, the Wall, the checkpoints, the daily night raids & arrests, the settlements, the jews-only highways, land grab, human rights violation and (mom insists I add this) PA (which means minus dignity) make life in the West Bank a living hell. My heart bleeds for the West Bank.

Rawan is another story, one of dignity, of a little body insisting on carrying on the toughest project of all, the project of living.

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