Behind the iron grip which Israel maintains on the Gaza Strip, there exists a vibrant tradition of painting murals and graffiti on outdoor walls. The origins and contemporary form of this tradition are considered in this article. The painting of murals and graffiti in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has its roots in the first intifada which began in 1987. As part of the resistance to Israeli occupation and repression, young people, at great personal risk, mobilised popular support through their clandestine artwork. The second intifada, beginning in 2000, saw the rise of Hamas as a force to be reckoned with, not least in terms of the increasing sophistication of its murals and graffiti, which paid special attention to calligraphy. Finally, with the departure of Israeli soldiers and settlers in 2005 and the takeover of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2007 this organisation came to dominate the walls. Murals in Gaza today cover a number of themes: Israeli oppression, Palestinian resistance, martyrs, prisoners and Palestinian aspirations – in particular, freedom and statehood, and the right to return.
PeteetJulie, ‘The writing on the walls: the graffiti of the intifada’, Cultural Anthropology (Vol. 11, no. 2, 1996), p. 145.
3.
KhatibLina, Image Politics in the Middle East: the role of the visual in political struggle (London, I.B. Tauris, 2013), p. 11.
4.
AbushagurSoumiea, The Art of Uprising: the Libyan revolution in graffiti (lulu.com, 2011).
5.
SchielkeSamuliWinegarJessica, ‘The writing on the walls of Egypt’, Middle East Report (No. 265, Winter2012); GröndahlMia, Revolution Graffiti: street art of the new Egypt (London, Thames and Hudson, 2013).
6.
KhalilNama, ‘Art and the Arab awakening’, Foreign Policy in Focus (2August2012).
7.
SalehTala, ‘Marking Beirut’, in ZoghbiPascalStoneDon Karl aka (eds) Arabic Graffiti (Berlin, From Here to Fame Publishing, 2011), pp. 81–5.
8.
ZayyadZiad Abu, ‘Land: the core of the conflict’, Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture (Vol. 4, no. 2, 1997).
9.
BoccoRiccardo, ‘UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees: a history within history’, Refugee Survey Quarterly (Vol. 28, nos. 2–3, 2009) pp. 229–52.
10.
MorrisBenny, Righteous Victims (New York, Vintage Books, 2001).
11.
IssaShawqi, ‘Palestine: notes from the inside’, Race & Class (Vol. 51, no. 3, 2010), p. 67. During the intifada, approximately 1,087 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and another 800 were executed by other Palestinians as alleged collaborators; 100 Israeli civilians and 60 Israeli soldiers also died: B’Tselem, ‘Fatalities in the first Intifada’, available at: http://www.btselem.org/statistics/first_intifada_tables
12.
SaidEdward, From Oslo to Iraq and the Roadmap (London, Bloomsbury, 2005), p. 17.
13.
On surveillance and its ideological roots, see ZureikElia, ‘Colonialism, surveillance and population control’, in ZureikEliaLyonDavidAbu-LabanYasmeen (eds), Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine (London, Routledge2011), pp. 3–46.
14.
HedgesChris, ‘A Gaza diary’, Harper’s Magazine (October2001).
15.
HammamiRema, ‘Anatomy of another rebellion’, Middle East Report (No. 217, Winter2000).
HammamiRema, ‘On the importance of thugs: the moral economy of a checkpoint’, Middle East Report (No. 231, Summer2004). That said, there was evidence of popular nonviolent resistance during the second intifada, especially at village level and usually in response to immediate local issues, such as the building of the Israeli separation wall. See HallwardMairNormanJulie (eds) Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
19.
FarsakhLeila, ‘Under siege: closure, separation and the Palestinian economy’, Middle East Report (No. 217, Winter2000).
20.
UrbinaIan, ‘The Analogy to Apartheid’, Middle East Report (No. 223, Summer2002). For the legal justification for viewing Israeli occupation of Palestine as colonialism and apartheid, see TilleyVirginia (ed.) Beyond Occupation: apartheid, colonialism and international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (London, Pluto Press, 2012).
21.
UsherGraham, ‘Hamas risen’, Middle East Report (No. 238, Spring2006).
22.
Milton-EdwardsBeverleyFarrellStephen, Hamas: the Islamic resistance movement (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010), pp. 208–29.
23.
Thus, during Operation Cast Lead, considered shortly, Fatah refused to allow demonstrations by Palestinians in the West Bank. AllenLori, ‘The scales of occupation: “Operation Cast Lead” and the targeting of the Gaza Strip’, Critique of Anthropology (Vol. 32, no. 3, 2012), p. 271.
24.
Ibid., p. 263.
25.
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, The Illegal Closure of the Gaza Strip: collective punishment of the civilian population (2010), p. 93.
26.
Allen, op. cit., p. 262.
27.
BartlettEva, ‘In Gaza, farming under fire’
, The Electronic Intifada (7April2009).
28.
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (2010), op. cit., p. 53.
29.
VidalJohn, ‘Water crisis will make Gaza strip “unliveable”’, Guardian (30August2012).
30.
PelhamNicholas, ‘Gaza’s tunnel complex’, Middle East Report (No. 261, Winter2011). Since the ousting of President Morsi in July 2013 the authorities have destroyed many entrances to the tunnels from Egypt.
31.
The UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, A/HRC/12/48 of 25September2009, par. 74.
32.
DenesNick, ‘From tanks to wheelchairs: unmanned aerial vehicles, Zionist battlefield experiments and the transparence of the civilian’, in Zureik. (eds), Surveillance, op. cit., p. 190.
33.
According to Ayman Muslik from Gaza, who began painting on the street at the age of 14 during the first intifada: ‘… we had not internet or newspapers that were free of control from the Israeli occupation’. Quoted in Toufic Haddad, ‘Gaza’s writing on the wall’, Al Jazeera (29Dec2009), available online at: http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/gazaoneyearon/2009/12/20091227105918485557.html
34.
FarmerStephanie, The Role of Murals and Graffiti in Struggles Against Occupation: the cases of North Ireland and Palestine, Masters Thesis, University of Illinois at Chicago (2003), p. 27.
35.
Peteet, op. cit., p. 143.
36.
Ibid., p. 147; Haddad, op. cit.
37.
Peteet, op. cit., p. 143.
38.
GröndahlMia, Gaza Graffiti: messages of love and politics (Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press, 2009), p. 10.
Photograph courtesy of Philip Hopper. Ghassan Kanafani was a writer and leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was assassinated in a car bomb in Lebanon in 1972. For coverage of West Bank murals, see Beyond the Walls, a film by EmbreyGayle (PowerSurge Productions, 2013).
MuslehMaath, ‘Taking back Palestine’s streets: exclusive interview with underground Jerusalem graffiti artist’, The Electronic Intifada (29August2012).
51.
ParryWilliam, Against the Wall: the art of resistance in Palestine (London, Pluto Press, 2010).
52.
HopperPhilip, ‘Bearing witness: memorial murals in Belfast and Bethlehem’, in LinenthalE.HymanJ.GruberC. (eds) The Landscapes of 9/11 (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2013), p. 146.
‘Gaza murals warn against collaboration’, Guardian (27June2010). As part of a policy of time-limited amnesty for informers, many murals spelt out graphically in visuals and text the clear message: ‘Your people’s blood is on your hands’.
64.
SartreJean-Paul, ‘Introduction’ to Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (London, Earthscan Publications, 1990), p. 26.
65.
Farmer, Role of Murals, op. cit., p. 29.
66.
AllenLori, ‘Getting by the Occupation: how violence became normal during the second Palestinian intifada’, Cultural Anthropology (Vol. 23, no. 3 2008), pp. 462–3.
Handala, the creation of Palestinian cartoonist Naji Salim al-Ali, assassinated in London in 1987, stands constantly with his hands behind his back observing developments in Palestine. He is permanently ten years of age and will not grow up until he ceases being a refugee and returns to his home. See HamdiTahrir, ‘Bearing witness in Palestinian resistance literature’, Race & Class (Vol. 52, no. 3, 2011) pp. 21–42.
71.
Bocco, ‘UNRWA’, op. cit., p. 229.
72.
Interviewed in Beyond the Walls, op. cit.
73.
RolstonBill, ‘“The Brothers on the Walls”: International Solidarity and Irish Political Murals’, Journal of Black Studies (Vol. 39, no. 3, 2009) pp. 446–70; RolstonBill, ‘Resistance and Pride: The Murals of Orgosolo, Sardinia’, State Crime (Vol. 3, no. 1, 2014, forthcoming).
74.
KunzleDavid, ‘The mural death squads of Nicaragua’, Z Magazine (6April1993), pp. 62–6.
75.
RolstonBill, ‘Trying to reach the future through the past: murals and commemoration in Northern Ireland’, Crime Media Culture (Vol. 6, no. 3, 2010), pp. 285–307.
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