A concrete canvas

People often ask me why I love the Middle East so much and I always struggle to find a suitable answer. After almost three years back in the UK I arrived a couple of days ago in Tel Aviv airport at some ungodly hour in the morning. Relieved to have been spared the notorious hospitality of the Ben Gurian airport security I made a beeline straight to the revered city of Jerusalem. As I spent the early hours wondering around watching the ancient medina rise from its slumber I decided it was the cordial chaos of life and intimate banter here that pleases me so much. Cockey lads selling fruit juice, groups of men huddled over the black gammon board and jostling market traders. Time flows through this place and the people don’t chase it.

Before my arrival my minds eye had this contested land clearly delineated into Arab and Jew or Israeli and Palestinian. However in the old city of Jerusalem (admittedly only less than 1% of the whole municipality) there is a history of inter-communal and interfaith existence that precedes any of our modern states by millennia. It is true that the fate of this city, which is a spiritual and actual epicentre for all of the monotheistic faiths, is integral to the ongoing conflicts in the region. However, to fresh eyes at least, there is somehow at least the illusion of a continued coexistence which muddies the waters of whose is whose and where is for whom.

En route to Bethlehem, which is in the occupied territories of the West Bank, olive trees speckle the hillsides on terraces, stacked like sedimentary layers of toil, sweat and love. Although I’ve seen plenty of pictures of the separation wall the reality of the crass, violent and insidious concrete structure that cuts it’s way through this biblical scene strikes as a stark reminder of the nature of the Israeli occupation; to ghettoise the remaining Palestinian communities and further cantonise the land. It is suddenly very clear whose is whose and where is for whom! Having arrived in Aida refugee camp where I will be based for the coming couple of months the wall is only ever a stones throw away. Just a few hundred metres from my flat the anonymous UK street artist Banksy used this ubiquitous monstrosity as his canvas to succinctly illustrate the natural conclusion of the wall’s construction. And what did he paint? A snipers target sitting squarely over the heart of a dove of peace.