Behind the wall.
It takes a while for me to get the hang of Checkpoint 300. Eventually a corridor in nude concrete and steel, half prison half abattoir, delivers me in a street cul-de-sac’d by the wall. Closed shops and scraps of paper wafting around in Brownian motion. Cabbies offer rides but, using what Google Translate says is the equivalent of No thanks, I’m walking I say Laa, shukran, inaa amshi and they all return to their cars.
Still wondering if I managed to send my message across or if I’d just confided that I’d rather be riding an elephant seal I walk into Bethlehem. The city hasn’t changed much since I last been here and the similarities with Mea Shearim, over the border in Jerusalem, are there for anyone to see. The same stone buildings, bootleg extensions, ungainly bowindows and odd balconies are proof that planning offices on either side of the border aren’t exactly mobbed by applicants.
A concrete dichotomy, pushing eight meters tall but feeling a lot higher, bisects the city. It sprouts out of side streets and carries on in monolithic nonchalance, impervious to the graffiti that cover its lower limbs or the scars left by petrol bombs on its watchtowers. I turn a corner and the wall is there, as careless as the 25-meters blue whale that had surfaced inches away from our boat off the coast of Sri Lanka, oblivious to our presence and perfectly happy regardless of whether we were there to see her or not.
Behind it is The Walled Off hotel. It’s early, the gallery hasn’t opened yet and neither has the museum; no customer has yet descended to eat breakfast and it’s obviously too early to check in. But yet I’m welcomed with open arms, offered a drink, a place to dry my soaked clothes and a coffee on the house.
The Walled Off opened in 2017, marking the centenary of the British mandate in Palestine. A shit show of such epic proportions, of such momentous implications, that you’d guess they had Priti Patel and Dominic Raab running it. Lone in a crowd of establishments that would rather gloss over the wall, catering instead to the religious trade, this place – created by Banksy and other artists – is a detour worth making.
I’m not one for understanding art or high-end hotels. In fact I’m a man of modest needs: give me a walk-in shower and one of those tiny shampoo flacons so I can play Godzilla having a bath and I’m happy. But this place is different.
Irony and cruel juxtaposition are the leitmotivs running through the Walled Off. The theme is old Britannia, an imprinting of green wallpaper, dark polished wood and plenty of lucid Chesterfield sofas scattered over three sprawling floors. Royalist paraphernalia clutters the walls like it surely does in the homes of most Workington Brexiteers. Charles’ and Di’s wedding commemorative cups, a view of Windsor painted on a ceramic plate and a lot more. But that’s when it all changes, when the boring English normality is wrecked by a reminder of what the Middle East often means.
Rows of CCTVs are nailed to the walls like hunting trophies. Next to them, above a piano playing a Jarvis Cocker motive every day at tea time, are three falling putti all breathing through airplane-style oxygen masks. A crucifix has been retrofitted as a grappling hook, knotted rope and all. Jesus looks to the heavens but sees only three flying drones, a red dot shining a hole in his forehead. Next to the entrance a triptych of oil paintings depict the aftermath of an Aegean refugee landing and, right beside it, a Nativity set shows how Jesus would be born in today’s Bethlehem.
After having done an installation in Gaza Banksy was quoted as saying “I don’t want to take sides. But […] what you’re really looking at is a vast outdoor recruitment centre for terrorists. And we should probably address that for all our sakes”. I can read this message throughout the rooms, here. We probably ought to address the elephant in the room.
I too, don’t want to take sides. Actually, I do; but it’s not the one you think. And it’s not the other either. The world isn’t black or white and the Middle East is the greyest of places. Nowhere like here is the truth that we’re all sinners truer: for every nasty piece of work on one side there’s another on the other; for every drone strike there’s a Qassam missile. The side I’m on is neither Bibi’s, nor Abu’s. It’s the side of the people, of those who – since 1917 – have been routinely shafted by those in power and by those who wanted to overthrow them. I’m pro Shlomo from Tel Aviv who would very much like to board a bus without being blown up and I’m pro Waleed.
Who’s Waleed? He’s the Walled Off official tour guide. A quintessential Palestinian in leather jacket, woolly sweater and packet of fags, he’s a forty-something with strong lineaments and a stubble coarser than sandpaper. He runs tours of the wall and the refugee camp twice a day for everyone who wants to do them.
The weather is more Scotland than Holy Land, so Waleed’s little Corsa is press-ganged into action. There’s three of us and, before we all pile up into the car, Waleed invites us to check his number plate. Politely we stare at a green-and-white series of numbers and letters before he, in the flourishing Neapolitan-lawyer-style that was his trademark, explains why he asked. With this plate, he says, he can’t pass the wall. Reaching Jerusalem, driving to the sea, is out of question; but so is a long list of roads within the West Bank itself. Route 557. Route 5. Route 404 (Road not found, one might say). Route 413. Route 60. Route 43. And more.
It’s a first glimpse into the reality of the West Bank, into the challenges of living here, a first dig into the heap of restrictions, paperwork and controls created to limit the movement of the population. Chief amongst them, of course, is the wall.
Both Waleed and the Walled Off’s museum are light on the reasons for it being built and it’d be remiss of me to do the same and to gloss over one statistic: 70 bombings in three years, 293 victims. All these were perpetrated by suicide bombers originating from the West Bank, with Israeli civilians their victims. After the wall went up, the number decreased to 12 in the same length of time and is now at zero.
Gut-wrenching as the thought is, if you were to frame it this way a wall mightn’t be the worst idea. Israel on one side, Palestine on the other, concrete and a generous helping of razor wire in the middle, keeping sides apart until collective wisdom prevails (or the sun’s turning into a red giant swallows us all, whatever comes first). Yet, something’s not fully squared out. There’s a lot to hint that, rather than following the Red Brigades’ motto Unum castigabis, centum emendabis, Israel’s decided to punish 100 to educate one.
Gut-wrenching as the thought is, if you were to frame it this way a wall mightn’t be the worst idea. Israel on one side, Palestine on the other, concrete and a generous helping of razor wire in the middle, keeping sides apart until collective wisdom prevails (or the sun’s turning into a red giant swallows us all, whatever comes first). Yet, something’s not fully squared out. There’s a lot to hint that, rather than following the Red Brigades’ motto Unum castigabis, centum emendabis, Israel’s decided to punish 100 to educate one.
If ever there was an embodiment of the negative externalities of Israel’s policies Nabil, 22-year-old born and bred in the Aida Refugee camp, would be it. Tel Aviv is an hour’s drive away yet he’s never been able to walk its corniche. Or to see the sea. His forthcoming trip to Italy, guest of a family from Brescia, will be his first one overseas: banned from flying out of Ben Gurion he’ll have to drive to Amman, 10 hours and 3 checkpoints away, driving around and beside the dozens of settlements – judged illegal by the international community – that dot the West Bank.
All Nabil and his friends know of Israel is the wall, the rocks and Molotovs they throw at it and what comes out in response: tear gas, rubber bullets, sponge grenades, flash-bangs, stinger grenades. Has he, or any of his friends, ever had the chance to speak with an Israeli, to sit down together and eat and drink to find, in the words of uncle Tony Bourdain, some common ground? Nabil laughs in incredulity. “How? With that thing in the way?”
Evening falls, the skies having miraculously cleared up a bit. I walk along the wall, heading towards the contorted knot of streets that is the city centre. Somebody has attentively, tenderly even, painted a young Leïa Khaled holding a rifle. Her claim to fame is to have hijacked flight TWA 840 for a terrorist organisation. A few meters downhill, on a wall not far from a set of concrete blocks plonked by Israeli soldiers to provide cover during raids, somebody has stencilled the profiles of sheikh Yassin, founder of Hamas, and Hassan Nasrallah, current secretary of Hezbollah.
I climb upwards, following streets familiar from years ago. Manger square opens up lively and serene at dusk, kids playing and tourists entering the Nativity church. As I stand there I’m reminded of something that Waleed mentioned in passing, of how 27 years ago – before a Jewish terrorist murdered Yitzhak Rabin and the peace process – things were better than they are today. Can we realistically hope to have some improvement if things have just grown worse and there’s no way for neighbours to interact with one another?
