Until the wall falls, divided societies portrayed in graffiti

Palestinian artists tend to use a darkened palette often using the colors of their national flag.

Christine Leuenberger, senior lecturer in science and technology studies, was a Fulbright scholar in Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2008. She recently returned from a six-week visit to Tel Aviv University’s Department of Geography, where she worked on two research projects.

One project examined how Palestinian and Israeli national territorial maps cartographically represent disputed territories and the other looked at social effects of the West Bank barrier on Palestinians and Israelis and how its conflicted meanings are communicated in graffiti and art on both sides of the wall.

Upon her return, she shared her thoughts on the graffiti and several of her photographs.

Unlike Israelis and Palestinians, who have limited access to the other side, "I freely crossed checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel and documented the effect on both sides of the West Bank barrier (which consists of walls in populated areas and an elaborate fence system in rural areas). Its meanings for Israeli, Palestinian and international artists are expressed by their wall graffiti. This has sparked ’conflict tourism.’ Tourists bus into Abu Diss, a neighborhood cut off from Jerusalem by the barrier, to stand in the shadow of the wall and read its voices," said Leuenberger.

Walls around the Palestinian cities of Tulkarem and Kalkilia have become largely invisible to Israelis driving along the adjacent Highway 6 -- heaps of soil, planted trees, bushes and plants cover the mass of concrete.

"For Palestinians, the wall has become a message board to share information, affirm Palestinian national identity and post calls for resistance and unity. International graffiti artists use the wall to show solidarity, raise awareness for human suffering and to bridge cultures. For artists from the project Face2Face, oversize images of Palestinians and Israelis are meant to show their similarity. Despite their best intentions, the images have been shredded and defaced.

"The West Bank barrier tells numerous stories -- many Palestinians and Israelis wait for the day that, like the Berlin Wall in 1989, this wall will also fall. Until then, the concrete slabs remain a testimony to conflict and will serve as a message board for stories of unity, resistance and suffering that do not appear in newspapers but are written solely onto the walls of Kalkilia, Jerusalem and Bethlehem."