Wordless Wednesday: The West Bank Wall

Used with the artist's graceful permission, the photograph above is by Italian photographer and conceptual artist Filippo Minelli. It's a shot of the West Bank Wall, which Israel calls its "separation barrier," and which most Palestinians, and more than a few Israelis, see as a land-grab: the wall is being built well inside Palestinian territory in the West Bank. It's splitting private Palestinian land-holdings, separating farmers from their land, rending communities and preventing thousands from reaching ready services like hospitals and schools.

The Israeli government claims the wall is also responsible for virtually ending Palestinians' campaign of terrorist bombings against civilian targets in Israel proper. It's indisputable: the wall's construction coincided with the near-eliminating of suicide bombings. But it also coincided with a truce. And even if the wall was a legitimate answer to legitimate security matters: why not build it on the 1967 border, in which case it would have been far less legally objectionable?

The graffiti Minelli caught, echoed as it is--literally in color and metaphorically in lyricism--by the more hopeful sky above, sums up the best that could happen to the bleakest new monument commemorating the bleakest of un-neighborly relationships in the land they still manage to call Holy.

See Also:

• Filippo Minelli's Web Site
• Filippo Minelli's Flickr Page
• Israel's West Bank Wall, or Separation Barrier
• B'Tselem, the Israeli Human Rights Organization, on the Separation Barrier
• Palestine and the Palestinians: A Profile
• When Settlers Terrorize Palestinians