Robbie Maakestad

Israel Defense Force (IDF) Soldier: “What the fuck are you doing?”Banksy: “You’ll have to wait until it’s finished.”IDF Soldier (to subordinates): “Safeties off!” —Banksy’s account of painting the West Bank wall, 2005 Blue and white guard rails shepherded us from a bus stop toward the low, sprawling Checkpoint 300 gate complex outside of Bethlehem where my friend and I planned to cross from Israel on foot into the West Bank. The imposing concrete West Bank wall stretched endlessly in both directions, reminding me of photos I’d seen of the Berlin Wall, although at 26 feet high, this border barrier stands three times taller, constructed from thin concrete slabs, each ten feet wide. Every so often a military turret tower split the wall panels. Near the top, wire netting hammocked outward to catch anything thrown by protesters on the West Bank side. It was spring of 2011—six years after Banksy first tagged the wall. Back in August of 2005, when Banksy traveled to Palestine after February’s Sharm el-Sheikh Summit signaled an end to the Second Intifada, he had already gained international recognition for his satirical anti-establishment installations in Bristol and for major exhibitions in Sydney, Los Angeles, and London. Back then, in 2005, the West Bank wall stood largely blank, and though he wasn’t the first to tag the wall, he was the first artist with any modicum of renown to attack the structure, so Banksy’s nine stenciled images on the wall transformed him into a worldwide icon. That day in 2011, my friend and I—both American college students studying abroad for a semester in Jerusalem—set out to hike the border wall to find Banksy’s work, the precise locations of which had eluded us during the minimal Google searching we’d done the previous day at our university in Jerusalem. We knew Banksy had left his mark on the wall several years previous, that he was a renowned contemporary artist, that his artwork on the wall had simultaneously increased international scrutiny of the West Bank wall and contributed to kickstarting a tradition of graffiti on that structure—all of which we hoped to witness now that we lived a mere bus-ride away.   On the other side of the checkpoint, I looked back at the plain concrete wall above the border complex and to my surprise, immediately saw the first Banksy installation, recognizable from my googling. A faded, black, dashed block line crept vertically up the wall, then turned at a right angle and traveled about forty-five feet before an angled turn downward: a pair of “cut along the dotted line” scissors appeared just to the right of the first corner angle. Originally, the line made a huge box, the bottom of which was painted onto the ground itself outside the checkpoint, meaning we’d walked across it without noticing. Sometime before 2011 when I visited, though, Israel had installed more fencing for crowd control, obstructing full view of the image. By 2017, Israel painted the wall sections at this checkpoint white, fully erasing this Banksy installation. Though it saddens me that street artwork can be destroyed like this, the first Banksy artwork that I ever witnessed in person demonstrates a couple key facets of this artistic medium: 1) graffiti exists always in temporal form. Existent street art can at any moment be defaced, replaced, or erased due to the public nature of the installation. And because the initial act of painting is in itself a defacement, what’s to stop further defacement by another graffiti artist, or for the owner of the defaced property to attempt to return the “canvas” to its original form? 2) all graffiti enacts a political message, no matter how innocuous the message might seem—at minimum, graffiti evidences a rejection of authority, of hierarchy, of societal norms. In the case of this dotted line installation, however, Banksy’s message tagged onto the wall an invitation to viewers to remove the very purpose of the wall, to open up the landscape once more, to return the wall to not-wall. So of course the state of Israel would paint this checkpoint section of the wall white. I’m just shocked they allowed the dotted line to exist for the six years from which Banksy painted it to the moment I viewed it.   The only West Bank Palestinians that Israel allows to cross the border are women, Christians, or Muslim men over the age of 23, married, with at least one child, who possess an officially documented job in Israel—a measure that is supposed to reduce terror attacks in Israel. Until October of 2023, each morning, before four a.m., 70,000-160,000 Palestinians with jobs in Israel lined up at one of twelve border crossings. It could take between two and five hours to cross. The fencing at Checkpoint 300 controlled the thousands of workers who have grown riotous in the past when the Israel Defense Force (IDF) stalls checkpoint crossing. Outside writers and scholars, as well as many Palestinians theorize that border delays are a tactic for getting Palestinians fired from jobs in Israel, while others guess the process is made arduous to keep Palestinians discouraged, stressed about catching rides. Since most of these workers pay monthly brokerage fees to secure jobs and work permits, if they miss a day of work, they end up owing money. I myself once experienced a crossing delay when IDF soldiers refused to let an elderly Palestinian couple cross the border because they each carried a plastic grocery bag full of pita bread, which the soldiers deemed beyond one day’s food supply—a limitation to control trade. As the couple argued to get their pitas across, the IDF soldiers halted all crossings for 20 minutes, laughing through the bulletproof glass as the couple argued to no effect and eventually gave up, walking back into the West Bank. This food import/export limitation is one example of policies that create an economic desert within the West Bank, which has limited capability for international trade given its lack of political autonomy from Israel. With minimal prospects for export, 71 percent of workers in the West Bank work in the service industry and there’s a 17 percent unemployment rate. Per capita, the average yearly income is only $4,300 a person, so money spent by tourists or foreign visitors is highly sought after, something I was clueless of as a student back in 2011. Since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 and the ongoing genocide that Israel is conducting in Gaza, the situation in the West Bank has become even more grim, as the state of Israel revoked 160,000 work permits for West Bank Palestinians—an economic reduction of $370,000,000 per month for Palestinians in the West Bank—a measure that’s hard to frame as anything but an economic punishment on the larger Palestinian population for the actions of Hamas. Since implementing this “security measure” on the West Bank’s population, some work permits have been reissued, though the majority have not.   Construction of the West Bank wall began during the Second Intifada (2000-2005) in what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel (MFA) described, in an official PowerPoint made public in 2000, as a “temporary defensive measure to block terrorist infiltration” [emphasis theirs]—a response to suicide bombings that wracked Jerusalem after Ariel Sharon, a controversial Israeli politician, visited the Temple Mount surrounded by hundreds of security guards. Statistically, violent attacks from the West Bank have decreased in Israel since its construction. According to the MFA, between 2000 and 2003 there were 73 terror attacks in Israel, killing 900 Israelis, whereas after the wall’s construction, between 2004 and 2008, there were only 15 officially designated acts of terror in Israel—killing 48. However, it seems impossible to pin decreased terror attacks directly on wall construction while ignoring hundreds of other pertinent factors—such as the end of the Second Intifada also mirroring this decrease in violent attacks. But even if the barrier itself were the primary cause of the decreased number of attacks, could that justify the wall’s oppressive effect on local Palestinian populations? This question becomes even more necessary to ask because, contrary to the MFA’s initial statement, the West Bank wall is anything but temporary. In that same PowerPoint circa-2000, the MFA stated that the barrier would not: “establish a border of any kind,” “annex Palestinian lands to Israel,” “change the legal status of any Palestinians,” “prevent Palestinians from going about their lives,” or “create permanent facts on the ground.” Another slide reads: “The Palestinians will not be cut off from their commercial and urban centers,” and “Every effort will be made to avoid causing hardship and interference with their daily lives.” These statements juxtapose later MFA slides that read [again, emphasis theirs]: “Death caused by terrorism is permanent; Inconvenience caused by the fence is temporary,” and “The right of Palestinians to freedom of movement cannot take precedence over the right of Israelis to live. Saving lives must come first.” This vastly oversimplifies, balancing several handfuls of deaths with systemic inconvenience doled out along ethnic lines—hardly an equitable comparison. And still today, the West Bank wall remains. And it’s not just the West Bank wall that inhibits Palestinian freedom of movement: in May 2025, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published a report documenting 849 movement obstacles and 288 road gates (checkpoints) imposed on Palestinians in the West Bank by the state of Israel, restricting the movement of the population at a micro level, compared to the wall. Obviously life has value, but at what point should large-scale oppression brought about by a wall no longer be categorized as an “inconvenience,” but shift into the realm of ongoing societal death? In 2004, the International Court of Justice deemed the West Bank wall a “breach” of “international humanitarian law.” That same year, the Red Cross echoed this ruling, characterizing the barrier as breaking the Geneva Convention, saying that the wall “runs counter to Israel’s obligation under [international humanitarian law] to ensure the humane treatment and well-being of the civilian population living under its occupation.” Despite the MFA’s insistence that the barrier would not cause the above-mentioned ill-effects, the wall has profoundly affected Palestinians in nearly all the ways that their PowerPoint promised it would not, splitting families, dividing land, and obstructing access to jobs and resources, creating horrific living conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank.   As I stumbled the length of the wall in 2011, I’d yet discovered little of the wall’s injustice; I was an American college student, nearly oblivious to any nuanced comprehension of the concrete canvas to my right—but the imposition of the drab structure, how it blocked out the land, how the looming gray cement contrasted the deep blue sky above, felt heavy, oppressive. Plastic grocery bags whipped about, snaking across the pavement, blowing up into the air, and catching on chunks of jagged cinder blocks dotting the landscape, evoking the slightest sliver of a sense that I did not understand what I was seeing, that I had no conception of the horrific effects of this structure, of the pain and invalidation that it imposed upon those living their days in its shadow. A third of a mile from Checkpoint 300 the graffiti grew thick—phrases scrawled everywhere: “Welcome to Soweto;” “I hate Israel;” “No Christ, No Peace—Know Christ, Know Peace;” “Fuck Israel;” “I Want My Ball Back…;” “‘I Will Cut You’—Bon Qui Qui;” “Je Suis Le Palestinian;” and “Leave Your Rights at the Checkpoint.” A light-blue streak of paint stretched as far as I could see in both directions, as if someone had walked along the wall with a paint roller stretched out at shoulder-height. In one place, a graffiti rhinoceros “burst” through the wall; this artist had come after the painter of the light blue stripe because they’d framed their work by modifying the line into a ribbon swirling down both sides of the rhino.    As my friend and I trudged the wall, an image caught my eye, only one concrete panel wide, almost hidden in an unintelligible mish-mash of color. Another Banksy: a simple monochrome stencil of two children playing with a beach pail and a small shovel beneath a painted “hole” in the wall. The light blue paint line streaked across the top of the taller child’s head and various unintelligible messages had been scrawled across their bodies. I’d nearly missed it because the image looked so different from the original I’d seen online: the hole originally showed a sandy beach scene with lush palm trees and blue water. But Banksy’s imaginary aperture had since been filled in white. Of Banksy’s artworks, this is my favorite as its 2011 state evidences the transience and mutability of street art; the ongoing-ness of story, of life, and of place; the critique of the lasting-ness of the structure upon which the art exists. But it’s my favorite for more than what it says about street art as a form: in 2005, Banksy depicted the children smiling while innocently playing with their buckets and shovels—implicitly, the ones who dug the hole through the wall, exposing the oasis on the other side; this artwork captures the promise and latent power, the potential of children, and in its position on the West Bank side of the wall, it evinces the freedom from the confines of the barrier that the West Bank will eventually gain. Yet, by the time I witnessed it in 2011, Banksy’s oasis had been blotted out with painted graffiti bricks, Banksy’s hole patched, the wall reconstructed with another artist’s spray paint. The children remain smiling, though, unbound by the graffitied chaos encroaching on all sides, nearly blotting them out.   During a 2019 conversation with Taqi Spateen—a Palestinian graffiti artist from Ramallah—I showed him the photos I’d taken of this Banksy back in 2011, of Banksy’s oasis covered over by painted white bricks. Spateen explained that one night in 2007 or 2008 a Zionist group from an Israeli settlement visited the West Bank wall in both Bethlehem and Ramallah to paint over any graffiti that depicted “a hole in the wall” or anything that made the wall “see-through.” Spateen continued: “It is 100 percent the Zionists [who] did it. They used the white color and the blue color because the flag of Israel is blue and white. And the material is too expensive; Palestinian people [are] unprepared to pay a hefty sum to destroy a painting on the wall.” In contrast, when he saw the photos, Hamza Abu Ayyash—a Palestinian artist—said, “Since it’s on the eastern side of the wall, then most probably a local [Palestinian] guy did it. Zionists are weaker than doing stuff in highly populated areas with Palestinians. It’s street art after all. Sometimes you should see it in a simpler way.” And he is right; anyone can paint on top of anyone else’s work on the wall. And it is possible that a Palestinian wanted to enact a flag-colored reminder of the state that’s enacting the oppression. But targeting “holes” painted onto the wall seems to me to be a deliberate and pointed gesture, especially considering the color choice. Either way, though, someone painted-in the “holes” in the wall, and this overwriting of Banksy’s work before 2011—which goes unreported by any western media outlet—evidences the extent to which the wall embodies the Palestinian/Israeli conflict: people care enough about maintaining the separation enacted by the wall that they went to the effort of erasing even a semblance of metaphoric freedom for anyone looking outward from the West Bank. And yet, looking at my photo again, I notice that just to the right of the children, another more recent artist painted a mural of a tree springing up, bursting a new hole in the wall, roots embedded deep within the image’s ground—an artist just as committed to breaking through the wall as whoever had erased the holes.   In 2005, Banksy published photos—which he called “Holiday Snaps”—of his West Bank artwork, writing on his website: 

The Israeli government is building a wall surrounding the occupied Palestinian territories. It… will eventually run for over 700km—the distance from London to Zurich. The wall is illegal under international law and essentially turns Palestine into the world’s largest open prison.

When installing his work, Banksy received mixed responses. Reportedly, as he was packing up his paint, Banksy thanked an elderly Palestinian man who’d told him that his graffiti looked beautiful, to which the man snapped, “We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall. Go home.” Street art forces the viewer to decide how to read the installation, to navigate the liminality of artistic expression and criminal act. Art on a border wall complicates this further: by tagging such a barrier—an embodied political structure—the artist imbues contrasting political significance, forcing the viewer to move beyond the structure’s base border functionality, to engage in conversation with the wall. Banksy’s interaction with the Palestinian gentleman evidences the crux of this dichotomy: is it better to leave the wall bare so onlookers see the plain concrete structure for its utilitarian purpose, or to elevate the barrier into a canvas, creating a massive symbol of protest?   Further down the wall, a sturdy military turret set into the concrete structure was splashed with an assortment of pastel paints like a Jackson Pollock canvas, splatters streaking down to the ground over top of the blue line of paint, still stretching itself across the span of the wall. Through the turret’s window slits far above, an IDF soldier in a battle helmet watched us pick our way along a large drainage culvert filled with volleyball sized stones, rusted metal, and refuse. It smelled like sewage, likely because the .4 square mile Aida refugee camp—which houses more than 5,500 Palestinian refugees—still lacks proper water access and sewage and waste disposal some 60 or more years after it was established for Palestinians displaced from 43 villages in Israel and the West Bank. And so, refuse is discarded in cesspools along the community’s edges abutting the wall. Behind the culvert, the silhouette of a prone figure spanned twenty-eight wall sections—an immense installation that made me feel tiny. Upon closer inspection, mock wall blocks constructed the silhouette—a personified stone blockade. I couldn’t decide whether the mural evidenced the personal nature of the wall, or if the wall lying down or sleeping had some significance lost to me, but the blue paint line stretched across the figure’s entirety, effectively binding the mural to the wall. Standing at the silhouette’s head, we could see the end of the wall a fourth of a mile or so ahead, and decided to walk there to finish it out even though there didn’t look to be much graffiti on the remaining wall. A gigantic mural of the phrase “Open Sesame” spanned twenty-two of the final wall panels, which seemed a fitting end to the structure. Only when I reached the final concrete wall segment did I realize that at some point between the sleeping silhouette and “Open Sesame,” the light blue stripe of paint had also ended, though I’d missed seeing where or how. Though the West Bank barrier is commonly thought of as a concrete wall, in actuality, concrete makes up a mere five percent of the barrier, fortifying the most fraught areas of the border, specifically the border nearest Jerusalem. In the official description by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel (MFA), the other 95 percent consists of a barrier fence that’s “high-tech and [that has] other intruder prevention systems,” which go unspecified. At the end of the barrier wall, intense coils of razor-wire replaced the cement, looping haphazardly, half buried in dead weeds on either side of a dirt IDF-controlled border patrol road extending as far as we could see.  By painting on the West Bank wall, Banksy both publicized Israel’s oppression of Palestine and legitimized the wall as canvas, creating space for the thousands of artists who have come after him. Banksy’s visit also turned the wall into a tourist destination, drawing visitors from around the world who then spread word of the wall’s effects. In 2007, Banksy returned to Palestine, opening an art exhibition titled “Santa’s Ghetto Bethlehem,” featuring collaborative work by artists interested in revitalizing West Bank tourism. Banksy added three graffiti installations, one of which was an IDF soldier checking the papers of a donkey (think the Virgin Mary riding a donkey to Bethlehem)—an artwork soon destroyed by Bethlehem locals who found the work too sardonic as the IDF actually requires animals to have papers to cross the border. However, in 2017, artist Taqi Spateen recreated the Banksy donkey on a notable section of the West Bank wall in Bethlehem, and since then, he’s maintained the image anytime it’s been defaced—both, I would venture, as an homage to the impact that Banksy’s graffiti has had on the local tourism industry and to the importance of the image’s critique of Israel’s ongoing border oppression.   Around noon, tired and hungry from our two mile trek, which had taken us the better part of the morning, we arrived back to Hebron Road—the main street running through Bethlehem that heads out Checkpoint 300 toward Jerusalem—and found another stenciled Banksy mural: this one of a young, pig-tailed girl, maybe eight years old, in a pink dress, patting down the leg of an IDF soldier who stands, feet spread, hands above his head against the wall so the viewer only sees his back. The soldier’s M16 leans up against the wall. A white bow wraps the girl’s waist. The drab concrete façade under the graffiti looks dirty compared to the olive green military uniform and the light pink dress, which has since faded to a crème color under the sun. Sometime after 2011, the owner of the building constructed a gift shop around the wall, both to monetize access to the artwork, and because other street artists kept tagging the wall, causing concern that this Banksy might be damaged beyond recognition, as has happened to some of his other works.  Cutting from Hebron Road to Manger Street, we happened upon another Banksy, painted on the side of the Saca Souvenir Store, which sells “Fine Jewelry—Genuine Antiquities—Olive Wood Carvings—Souvenirs.” Tagged onto the olive green-gray facade flies a white dove with wings spread, an olive branch in its mouth. In the classic Banksy twist of expectations, the dove wears a flak jacket. Over the bird’s breast, a red sniper sight crisscrosses a central laser dot. Next to the dove, a sign greets visitors: “Welcome to Palestine. Welcome to Bethlehem.”   After grabbing falafel from a corner shop, my friend and I hailed a taxi for the two miles back to Checkpoint 300 because we’d seen the Banksy’s we’d come to see. Pulling out onto the street, the young Arab cab driver introduced himself: “My name is Hassan. You?”After introducing ourselves, we asked him about driving. “It is very bad here in Bethlehem,” he said. “No jobs. No agriculture because Israel sends water to Jewish settlements instead of here. Driving taxis is an okay job though because there are many tourists. There were many drivers waiting for you at Checkpoint 300, yes?”We nodded. There had been dozens waiting when we arrived that morning.“Many drivers wait there, but I don’t. Drivers rent their taxi every day from a company and get one tank of gas free, so every day I hope for many trips to make back the rent. It is hard, but it is a job and I am very thankful.”After inquiring where we lived in the U.S., Hassan asked why we were studying in Israel and why we were in the West Bank. “Ah,” he said. “Banksy. Very famous.” After a long pause, Hassan said, “Jerusalem… Is it a big city?” “Wait…” I stammered, “what?”—momentarily confused by the question because the outskirts of Jerusalem are easily visible on the hills beyond the West Bank wall. “It is a big city? I cannot go there, but my grandpa lived in Jerusalem before the separation and tells many stories. What do you like about the city? Is it beautiful?”My friend and I described how much we loved living just outside Jerusalem’s Old City, how walking the crowded alleys felt like being transported hundreds of years into the past, the beauty of the Dome of the Rock. Hassan pressed us for more—Jerusalem’s New City, the urban sprawl, the wide boulevards, the expansive markets. “I sometimes go to the top of a hill and look out at Jerusalem,” Hassan said. “It seems very beautiful. It is my dream to go there someday. Maybe I will get a job in Jerusalem when I am older. No more taxi driving.”I didn’t know what to say other than agreeing that hopefully one day he could. Here I was an American taking a day trip into the West Bank to see art, and he couldn’t visit his grandfather’s city on the other side of the wall.   In March of 2017, Banksy returned once more to Bethlehem to open “The Walled Off Hotel,” a functioning nine-room hotel owned by a Palestinian named Wisam Salsaa. The second floor of the hotel contains an art gallery displaying work by renowned or up-and-coming Palestinian artists. The hotel rooms, decorated by Banksy and other artists, run from $60 to $965 a night, and provide views of the West Bank barrier. Salsaa calls it the “hotel with the worst view in the world.” On the walls of the “Banksy Room,” which runs at $265 a night (the cheapest room painted by Banksy himself), a soldier and Palestinian boy engage in a pillow fight and delicately painted feathers explode throughout the background. In another room hangs a framed graffiti image of a Palestinian woman holding a brick as depicted in CNN coverage, yet a layer of glass covers the work, a bullet hole shattering the still. The “Budget Barracks” (the $60 option) are furnished with surplus items from IDF military barracks—concrete walls and floors, thin metal bunk beds, mosquito netting, and barred windows. The hotel lobby itself is open to the public and contains a functional café themed like a colonial British outpost circa 1917, the year Britain announced official support for establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The café walls display homemade slingshots beneath rows of security cameras, as well as various Banksys: Palestinian children scaling heaven’s gate, an industrial bulldozer dozing peaceful homeowners, a portrait of Jesus (with a laser site trained on his forehead) looking upon drones overhead, and a tower turret turned into a carnival-esque merry-go-round for children. In a corner stands a Romanesque bust: nose and mouth covered with a handkerchief, a can of teargas frozen in perpetual spray wending its way around the statue. Every hotel key attaches to a scaled-down concrete panel of the West Bank wall—each six inches tall, heavy and unwieldy.   In the FAQ page on the hotel website, in response to “Can I paint the wall?” Banksy writes, “Guests enjoy privileged out of hours access to Wall*Mart next door—the graffiti supplies store which stocks everything you need to make your mark and offers expert local advice and guidance.” After “Is It legal?” Banksy writes, “It’s not not legal. The wall itself remains illegal under international law.” Under “Is It Ethical?” Banksy: “Some people don’t agree with painting the wall and argue anything that trivialises or normalises its existence is a mistake. Then again, others welcome any attention brought to it and the ongoing situation. So in essence—you can paint it, but avoid anything normal or trivial.”In December of 2017, Banksy painted two cherubs near the Walled Off Hotel. Together, the angels work to pull the wall apart with a crowbar, and a slight gap in the wall makes it appear that their concerted effort is working.   Hassan pulled the taxi up to Checkpoint 300 where we’d cross back into Israel. “You have seen both the Banksy’s here at the checkpoint? Cut-along-the-line and the chairs?” “We saw the line, but not the chairs,” I said. “Where’s that one?” “The chairs have been damaged, but part is still there,” Hassan said, motioning to a wall section nearly hidden to the left of the border complex, on which were stenciled two black and white wingback armchairs. Between these, a small decorative table supported a single flower pot, behind which stretched an expansive curtained window. We thanked Hassan, paid, and he drove off, leaving us staring at this final Banksy.I later learned that originally, within the window, Banksy had pasted a large poster photograph of a snowy mountain foregrounded by a wooded pond—a realistic contrast to his crisp, stenciled cartoon chairs. Yet that day, in the condition in which I saw it, phrases had been scribbled across the gigantic furniture and the alpine landscape photo was long gone, peeled away to expose an empty window frame, filled in with light blue paint.Today though, looking back at the photo I took of that Banksy in 2011, for the first time I notice that whoever painted the window light blue—the Zionists or Palestinians, whoever did it—also streaked their paint roller to or from the west, breaking Banksy’s window frame with a single streak of paint—the origin point, or perhaps the ending point—of the light blue line that I’d lost track of while walking the length of the wall. Across the entirety of the window pane, washed-in with the color of the sky, someone had scrawled brick and mortar lines in dark blue and green—one final window walled into the West Bank barrier. 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