One of the main to go for group travel to join on my trip to Israel was that everything would be planned out and confirmed already. You get some time to explore by yourself here and there, but visits to museums and transportation to the next city are all taken care of. So every morning in the Middle East, I'd look at the travel program I'd gotten and know what's up - until we hit Jerusalem. As it turns out, the travel organization had given out two different programs, with some significant differences between them. One stated we'd get half a day to ourselves to explore Jerusalem, the other said this would happen in Bethlehem. A quick vote decided we'd spend that afternoon in Bethlehem. I quietly cheered: this meant that I could go look at the street art on the West Bank Barrier!


The West Bank Barrier, under construction since 2000 by Israel, is a hideous concrete structure that spans 708 kilometers, separating the Palestinian West Bank from Israel. It's also known as the Separation Wall, Security Fence or Wall of Apartheid. The wall legendary in the street art world, partially because of how much space it offers, mainly because Banksy left some clear political statements on it. After seeing his work framed at exhibitions in Antwerp and Amsterdam I was dying to see Banksy's art in the wild. My tour guide, a very anti-Palestine man, completely lost his temper when he heard me say I was excited to go to the Barrier for the art.
'Do you even know why that wall was built?!' he basically yelled at me. I admitted that I didn't. As it turns out, the Israelis say that they built a concrete barrier to protect themselves from Muslim suicide bombers. The Palestinians, however, see it as racial segregation. They're vocal about it, and one way to show how they feel about the situation is through art on the very thing that symbolizes the problems in the region. It's this combination of art and politics that drew me to the West Bank Barrier while the rest of the tour group went to visit churches and biblical places as usual.


After a very brief, more or less obligatory visit to the Church of the Nativity with the entire group, I set out for the wall with the friends I'd made in the group, a young Frisian couple. We walked through the old city and soon saw the first signs of Banksy's visit in the shape of some relatively small stencils depicting children playing with bombs and toys made of barbed wire. One of these stencils happened to be on the corner of the street our hotel was on. It was a nice warm-up for what was to come, though we decided to take a little detour to one of Banksy's works on the wall of the Palestinian Heritage Center on Manger Street. Here, a huge white dove in a bulletproof vest offers an olive branch while trapped in a sniper's crosshairs. My Frisian friends hadn't seen it yet, so I showed them the mural and explained how it was made. In terms of artistry and message, it was one of my favorite pieces of the day.

Once we'd taken enough pictures to last us a lifetime, we left for the wall for real now. We approached it from Manger Street, then Hebron Road, where we were greeted by concrete blocks with slogans in crude spray painted letters on them. For a second I was scared. Up until that moment, I hadn't really thought about safety much, as Bethlehem was so calm and the people so friendly. But the concrete blocks and enormous watch towers sent shivers down my spine. What if walking too close to the barrier would be viewed as a threat by the Israeli army? At the same time, my mind registered the details and size of the enormous murals and I realized those were a sign of safety: if anyone approaching the wall would be seen as a threat, there would be no art there.


We walked straight up to the barrier, down an alley were not many tourists seemed to come. I was in street art heaven. I snapped picture after picture and eventually even climbed up on the base to slap one of my own stickers on the West Bank Barrier. It was so different from all the biblical places I'd visited with the group. It was beautiful in a painful way. It made me want to change the world in ways I can't, because I simply don't have that kind of political power. All I can do is talk and write about Palestine, just like most Palestinians can only paint on this awful wall to let their voices be heard.


"Make hummus, not walls" seems to be the slogan of the Palestinians, though they also don't shy away from calling the West Bank an 'outdoor prison' on the endless concrete. There are official plaques with information, but you'll learn far more about the situation in Palestine and the way Palestinians experience it by looking at the graffiti. The 'ugly' tags are voices shouting the opinions of those who experienced oppression, the beautiful murals are well-written pleas for peace and justice. There was a huge piece depicting Messi shooting a football through barbed wire, as Argentine canceling a match with Israel prior to the World Cup was seen as a positive thing on this side of the wall. There's a mirror, showing us we're all people, no matter our background, culture and religion.


The paint fills every inch of the concrete here with countless Palestinian flags, the words "Free Palestine" and the ever-present "Make hummus, not walls". Of course there are original Banksy pieces too, but though they were what drew me to the wall in the first place, the piece that hit me hardest was a huge portrait of Razan, a Palestinian girl who volunteered as a nurse/paramedic but won't ever treat another patient again: She was shot by the Israeli army while she was treating a patient close to the border in Gaza last June. The Dutch media has remained eerily silent on this story...


Though the situation is grave, the colorful murals lifted my spirits while I walked along the West Bank Barrier. Yet the art wasn't the only interesting thing on this walk. Soon Palestinians came up to us to tell us about life on the West Bank. The man attending to the small shop full of Banksy merchandise went out of his way to explain the Messi and Razan paintings. He pointed details out and handed us a ladder so we could take better pictures. Another man came up to us and, in an attempt to get us to buy a drink from his stall out of pity, told us he had fairly recently gotten out of prison. He'd killed a man: after his innocent father had died in a tear gas attack from the Israeli army, he went berserk and left the Israelis with one soldier less in their ranks. Though I can't vouch for this particular story, it was still shocking to hear, because this is the harsh reality for Palestinians on the West Bank as well as in Gaza. It's an insight like this, meeting locals and talking to them, that made the whole experience even more special.


After our conversations with the locals, we continued walking along the wall until we reached Banksy's Walled Off Hotel. I didn't go inside, because the wall intrigued me more. Sadly, the street art was quite low-quality here. Right next to the Walled Off Hotel, shops have popped up where you can hire spray cans and stencils. This has resulted into layer upon layer of rip-off miniature Banksies and generic images like superhero logos and even Taylor Swift's album cover for Reputation. The latter appalled me. To me, the West Bank Barrier shows we didn't learn from Berlin: It's a place to think about the way we as humans treat one another, not a place to stan your favorite artist. I also wonder how Banksy, who is known for his anti-capitalistic views, feels about his stencils being rented out as a fun activity for tourists, helping them leave their mark on this wall with no thought behind it whatsoever.


At that moment, just as I was getting fed-up with the commercialization of art and political statements on the West Bank Barrier, we decided to turn back and go for a drink in the old city. We could have walked on for much longer, all the way up to Checkpoint 300, but I think that would have become overwhelming. There's so much to see that you don't really take it in anymore after the first couple of hundred meters. I could've spent days looking at all the art, but we had a trip to the Dead Sea planned the next day. I fully enjoyed my time at the wall though, weird as that may sound considering the political situation it symbolizes. The thing is, this afternoon in the shadows of the West Bank Barrier gave me a better insight into politics and life on the West Bank. Without this visit, I only would've seen the Israeli side of this conflict's story. If you're looking for the Palestinian side, this is the place to go: you'll see it told in the beautiful and raw language of street art.