Visual culture is not only about studying
images or media, but it also includes the daily life practices of what one sees
or does. Visual culture is the visual construction of the social, political and
other elements of vision. In Palestine, and with the existence of the Israeli
occupation, there are many visual medias surrounding them, such as the
Apartheid Wall and the graffiti on it, the checkpoints and even the weekly
demonstrations in several Palestinian villages against the Apartheid Wall,
which will all be discussed in this research paper.
Different kinds of barriers, checkpoints
and walls surround Palestine, shattering the Palestinian families, social life
and the Palestinian identity. One kind of barrier is what the Palestinians call
the "Apartheid Wall", the same one that Israelis call the "Security
Fence". The idea of its establishment started in 1988 by the minister
Is-haq Rabein. The main aim of building this wall was to stop the Palestinians
from making martyrdom operations, or what others call "suicide bombings",
in the occupied lands "Israel". To prevent killing Israelis was one
reason, other reasons were to make it impossible for Palestinians to recreate
and rebuild Palestine on what was left of the lands under the control of
Palestinians. Moreover, another aim of the wall is to deconstruct the
economical and social lives of Palestinians through preventing them from
reaching their farms on the other side of the wall, and not being able to reach
their own families in different villages and cities.
The Apartheid Wall had many
consequences on Palestinians. Yet, they never gave up, nor was there any capitulation
from the Palestinians towards the Israeli authorities. They have always
demonstrated against it in many forms. One way was through the weekly
demonstrations that took place in many villages especially Nilin and Bilin. The
people of these villages used many ways to let the world hear their voice in
rejecting the wall. Many international activists responded to the call of the
villagers and joined them. Peaceful protests took place through the participation
of hundreds of activists walking down the streets beside the wall reaching the
Israeli checkpoints. As usual, Israelis shot rubber bullets, tear gas bombs, and
sound bombs while experimenting with their renewed weapons on these activists
to see what kinds of results will be produced. In addition, arresting activists
took place. Some remain in the Israeli prisons, while international activists
were taken to the airport and sent back to their countries. Activists either
defend themselves through throwing stones and rocks on the Israeli Occupation
Force when the latter starts shooting on them. However, other ways were employed
by protesters but on a peaceful level like drawing
and painting graffiti on the Wall as a way of resisting. The Wall did not
remain just a grey wall, but turned into a colored canvas that portrays many
themes, lessons, and hopes that reflect resistance and struggling.
The apartheid wall became a canvas
which Palestinians and international artists began to establish their own
street art tradition on, merging the visual tradition and perspectives from the
Western, Jewish and Arabic diasporas. Drawing on walls did not start in
Palestine, but the graffiti art and street art movement started in New York and
Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and on the Berlin Wall in 1980s,
then spread across the world. The
graffiti art was a way of expressing people's frustration with life. Marker
pens, aerosol spray cans, industrial spray paint, acrylics and stencils on all
types of surfaces were used to draw on subway trains, billboards and walls.
The term graffiti comes from both
the Greek term "Graphein" meaning "to write" and the Italian
word "graffiti", which is plural of the word "Graffito" meaning
"scratch". Its history can be dated back to prehistoric cave man wall
drawings, and it can be seen as a human 'need' for communication-
"Graffiti represents man's desire to communicate" (Wechsler vi).
The Apartheid Wall that started to
be built in Palestine in 2005 demonstrated resistance and refusing the Israeli
occupation on a bigger landscape. Moreover, the intention of the graffiti on
the apartheid wall was never to make it beautiful or to hide its ugliness and
cruelty. Rather, it is a visual art aiming to express cultural identities. Moreover,
there is nothing beautiful to show on the Wall, especially that dozens of
Palestinian people were arrested, pursued, and even killed while jumping to the
other side of the land to either find a job or reach their lands or relatives.
The wall demonstrates resistance, fighting and never surrendering to the
others, Israelis. No matter how many drawn graffiti there is on the wall, it
will never hide the reality of having an oppressive Wall that is separating and
stealing acres of the Palestinian lands and making the lives of Palestinians
harder and more miserable.
Protest art and wall graffiti are
considered a way of expressing "sumud" which means durability or
resistance. Writing, drawing, and documenting the Palestinian narratives is
required to shape the Palestinian experience and give it life in the eyes of
the audience as well as keeping the Palestinian cause alive. The existence of
the wall is to examine its complex interaction with networks of power
relations, and this reflects what Foucault said: "resistance is never in a
position of exteriority in relation to power". Palestinians' aim is not to
show power as much as their goal was to confirm their right in this land.
Israelis try reconstructing a
genealogy of visuality that Mirzoeff talks about in "The Right To
Look". There are the Palestinians who try resisting the hegemonic actions
done by Israelis, yet Israelis continue their different kinds of
counter-movements to have power upon Palestinians. Such actions according to
Mirzoeff "control our ways of seeing. First, Visuality defines,
categorizes, and names the objects and even individuals in its realm. Second,
visuality separates people who are in groups in order to classify them as a way
of social organization. Then, third, visuality creates its characteristic type
of classification appear right, and aesthetically right and attractive.
Such actions can be demonstrated in
the Palestinian cause through: First, the ways Israelis construct the Apartheid
Wall and checkpoint, they classify themselves within a certain upper political
and social class, and categorize Palestinians according to the place they are
living in, either it is in the occupied lands as "Israel" or in the
West Bank. Second, it can be experienced in the Palestinian case how they are
deconstructed into political groups according to the lands they live in, which
categorizes them into giving them a certain ID. Palestinians in the West Bank
hold a "green cover ID" that does not allow them to go anyplace
outside the West Bank, meanwhile Palestinians in Jerusalem hold the "blue
cover ID" that allows them to go anywhere in "Israel" or the West
Bank, and finally, Palestinians who live in the occupied lands
"Israel" hold an Israeli passport. Third, Israelis' means of
classifying Palestinians, categorizing, naming and separating them is a way to
make Palestinians feel that it is something normal and part of the status-quo,
the time it is not. Israelis think that the way Palestinians have such
visuality like the Apartheid Wall or ways of power upon them will let them
accept the status-quo, which is impossible due to their continuous resistance.
The
Apartheid Wall let the Israeli authorities extend and have more domination on
the space "the land". But at the same time, it makes the people pay
attention to it, protest and have an international and local resistance against
it. Graffiti and all kinds of art were challenging the Israeli hegemony and
reclaiming the Palestinian space and their unheard voices. It became a way to
resist in order to gain the freedom of expression and justice. Some of the
statements that were written on the Wall are, "Silence is
Complicity", "words are now our new weapons" and "to resist
is to exist". Graffiti was never a
solution but is a way for the world to know what kind of oppression
Palestinians are facing and having to deal with on a daily basis. No matter how
much the Wall is colored, it will never cancel the idea of its existence. As a
Palestinian living in Palestine, the graffiti does show resistance and
simultaneously never lets Palestinians forget the thought of having to pass by
it each and every time they want to move from one city to another. It will
never let them forget the lands that were taken away from them in order for Israelis to have security from
Palestinians through the Wall. In the eyes of Israelis, it gives them
protection. However, in Palestinians' eyes, they would feel insecure and
humiliated. Israelis try to protect themselves from the owners of this land
-Palestine- but will never lead Palestinians to give up. On the contrary, Palestinians
will resist more and be even more aggressive.
Doors, windows, cracks and skies are
drawn all over the Apartheid Wall in many cities and villages. Such visual arts
does not weaken nor cancels the reality of the existence of the wall. Rather, it
awakens and revives the importance of resisting in all forms. It leads the
Palestinians to imagine life without it and work on regaining the freedom they
once had before it was built.
Furthermore, such graffiti confronts
the Israelis to let them know the Palestinian thoughts of it; the trouble,
misery and plight Palestinians go through. However, Israelis reject these
thoughts through several actions such as removing the paintings, arresting
artists or just refusing to negotiate with Palestinians. It is the visual forms
in the "the right to look" that Mirzeoff discusses; the forms of seeing and not seeing, being
seen and not being seen.
One of the international artists,
Bansky, visited Palestine to show support to the Palestinians against the
Apartheid Wall. Luckily, his visit to Palestine gathered media attention to his
work on the Wall when he drew many effective graffiti on it. Other graffiti
never had this attention before by media. For decades, Palestinians were also
prevented from controlling their own news media, holding gallery exhibitions,
or even waving the Palestinian flag for fear that their own expression of
national identity would incite Israeli retribution. Now the Palestinians and
Israeli artists are creating their own language, complied of the Arabic and
Western visual tradition, by using tools of the street artist: wheat paste,
spray paint and stencils (Moscovitz, 2007).
Unfortunately, the street graffiti
in Palestine is very difficult to document due to the Israeli actions in
quickly removing them. Yet, Palestinian artists kept on repainting the Wall
again and again. Western artists also expressed their interest in the Wall as a
symbol of disconnection and oppressive politics. Bansky painted a graffiti of a
small child climbing through a hole in the Wall enveloped by the clear blue sky
of freedom.
Banksy had always drawn his graffiti
when there was no one around him. His aim of painting at night was to keep the
drawings anonymous so no Palestinian nor any person would judge them according
to the artists' background. The graffiti of the child was discovered next to
Qalandia checkpoint the morning after it was drawn. Moreover, he did not want
the Israelis to chase, arrest and send him back to Britain. Any person of any
age can see his graffiti and understand them. His art is filled with
truthfulness and joy, in addition to disobedience and rebelliousness. Others
see his paintings only as random drawings making the Wall look less ugly than
it is, and some see the paintings and graffiti and imagine how it is like
behind the Wall. The wall provides a glimpse into the lives of Palestinians.
It is the visual power that can be
found when one looks at the wall. Visuality is a mental operation which
organizes images, graffiti and pictures into a pattern that has a certain effect
on the spectator. It is the decision of the Palestinian to look or not to look
at what is drawn on the Wall, while the Israelis try hiding these graffiti. It
is how Palestinians comprehend these graffiti. Observing such paintings from
the Palestinian point of view is what matters since how the Palestinians
identify would be looked at as the others which gives the Israelis the
privilege to consider themselves the "self".
Not only graffiti, but the daily events
happening in Palestine make the self and the other exist. This is what Frantz
Fanon talked about in his article "The Fact of Blackness" when it
came to the black people who were looked at as the others according to people
who used to see themselves as superior. The daily events in Palestine and the racist discrimination
from the Israeli state towards Palestinians gave these terms life. It is not
that Palestinians observe the term "others" as "we are the
others to Israelis" as much as this idea was planted in an indirect way from
the Israelis' points of view by considering themselves "the self".
There is no chance for one to
understand what it is to be an "Israeli" without the existence of the
Palestinians. The way Israelis see themselves is produced from having
Palestinians. The Palestinian identity is unstructured with the experience of
Israelis, but the Israeli identity is structured with the existence of the
Palestinians. However, Palestinians seek to prove their existence in dozens of
ways in order to ingrain their own identity which is not only in the land, but
also in almost everything surrounded by them. Long time ago, Israelis never saw
themselves as the "self" because there was no such thing as Israelis
before they came to Palestine. This shows how categories are shifting through
time and according to a certain circumstance which is the invasion of
Palestine.
There are
many processes of being the other, and in this case as a Palestinian.
Palestinians are created as people who are "othered" to the Israelis,
being seen, looked at, categorized, rationalized and even gendered these
Palestinians through their gaze. This way of seeing them makes Palestinians
feel the surveillance they have upon them from Israelis. This itself leads to
the construction of the "other" identity which Palestinians start having
through the racial, powerful, colonial, and imperial Israeli gaze. Moreover,
Palestinians constructing themselves as the "others", itself will
give the Israelis the authority and power to define Palestinians the way they
want and not the way Palestinians themselves want to be defined in.
The self and the other is an ideology where
one believes that he or she is the subject who can construct and classify
others according to himself or herself. Israelis construct themselves according
to the Palestinians, through the actions they make against them. As Mirzeoff
discussed in his article about the three elements, classification, separation
and aesthetics, Israelis classify and separate Palestinians then comes the last
element which is aesthetics. The visual regime of classification exists in the
way Israelis classify themselves and classify Palestinians. Such a
classification is how Palestinians on the ground experience such an element
whether it is social, political, ethnic, or even national. Also, what also
matters is how Palestinians themselves feel towards such a classification and
how they react and respond to it. Then comes separation and the way Israelis employ their power to
separate Palestinians the way Israelis desire, through having a kind of power
and superior look upon Palestinians. Then the last element, aesthetics, which
can be found in the Israeli state through the Apartheid Wall and checkpoints
they put to make Palestinians pass by or walk through. Classifying Palestinians
by categorizing and defining them reflects a superior gaze by the Israeli harsh
regime at the Palestinians which makes the latter appear as the defeated one,
but not as victims. The social and political attitude in identifying Palestinians
through the Apartheid Wall shows how powerful a force Israelis had turned into
through illustrating the Palestinian identity.
Moreover, Mirzoeff discusses how the
authority creates a type of power upon others, who in this case are the
Palestinians, as if it is something natural. This results in violent and
destructive actions of visual authority that is performed against the
Palestinians. Each and every act of visual authority from the Israelis was
faced by a counter performance from the Palestinians through resisting,
rebellious actions and different ways of seeing. This shows the Israeli
apparatus behavior of visual control towards Palestinians. It is the way
Mirzoeff talks in his article "The Right to Look" about the space
where there is a gaze in visions and imaginary of the other.
Israelis building the Apartheid Wall
had separated Palestinian homes from each other visually, mentally and
physically. This separation leads the Palestinian population to interact less
between themselves as neighbors and have less powerful relations. In addition, the
wall encourages the acceptance of naturally oppositional identities based on
security. This results in the creation of Us "the self as Israelis"
inside the Wall and Them "others as Palestinians" outside it. What
matters in building the Wall is not about separating Palestinians physically as
much as separating them for the purpose of security to the Israelis themselves.
Moreover, the Apartheid Wall not only leads Israelis to classify Palestinians
but also separate them from each other. Separating Palestinians who live inside
the occupied lands in what is called "Israel" from the ones who are
living outside the wall, where it started being called the "West
Bank". These Walls -that are six meters long, with concrete towers next to
them, and at the top of the Wall a barbwire- caused a physical and visual
barrier between Palestinians themselves on one side, and Palestinians with
Israelis on the other. This creates not only two communities, but three with
the one between Palestinians who are inside and outside the wall. Such
separation also catalyzes a negative relationship described in fear from the
ones who are inside, and frustration from those who are outside who are
considered as a threat to the security of Israel. Not only that, but also the
Wall gives the Israelis the power between themselves against Palestinians. Such
a result leads Israelis to act as if the wall does not physically exist due to
the overseer.
Through separating Palestinians from
the insiders who are the Israelis, discrimination exists in addition to
Palestinians having no human rights. Israeli policy against the others who are
the outsiders "Palestinians" has always been about humiliating them. The
idea of the Wall existed a long time ago, and building it was mostly to secure
themselves through it. All this was part of their plan which led them to go
into action with building the Wall. Moreover, one of its aims was to decrease
the Palestinian demonstrations with the help of international activists from
reaching the occupied lands "Israel". However, Israelis did not
expect weekly demonstrations happening by Palestinians in villages against the
wall.
Palestinians in the villages of Ni'lin
and Bil'in demonstrate each Friday after the Friday prayers near the Wall in
these villages with the support of international activists. Such demonstrations
started when Israelis stole approximately 800 acres out of the 4000 of Bili'n
village. The same thing happened to Nilin as Israelis stole hundreds of acres
of it to build settlements upon it. Yet, people never gave up, each and every
week since February 2005 they demonstrated next to the wall. Year by year their
demonstrations became more innovative. Visual elements were included in such protests according to the
anniversary and the event the day of the protest coincides with. Palestinians
on Christmas wear Santa Claus outfits while throwing rocks. And when the
national football player Mahmoud Sarsak was on food strike in an Israeli jail,
activists played football in front of the Israeli soldiers who were throwing
tear gas and sound bombs at them. During the Olympics, they used to throw back
the tear gas bombs using tennis rackets. And when the Avatar movie was in
cinemas, they painted themselves blue and went down to the streets. Hundreds of
similar events took place in these villages where Israeli soldiers were being
entertained with the visuality they see weekly. Palestinians used such ways to
let their voices be heard through media to the world through using different
visual identities. They want justice to take place, basic human rights, an end
to the humiliation, and freedom. Meanwhile, Israelis looked at it only as
entertainment and using their weapons for the sake of the security of Israel as
they believe. Palestinians ways of resisting can be considered part of
"The Right To Look" that Mirzoeff talks about. The ways of resistance
takes place of how Palestinians look at their lands, the Apartheid Wall, and
checkpoints as a threat to their lives, the time Israelis look at such
visuality as a way to secure themselves. It is a complex of visuality and how
each looks at a certain thing differently. Moreover, Palestinians always do
their best to show their plight to Israelis through graffiti and such visual demonstrations,
meanwhile Israelis respond to such actions through violence, like arresting,
killing, and even building higher walls, and putting more checkpoints.
Checkpoints
are a different kind of visuality that are constructed on the entrances of each
and every city in the West Bank, and between the West Bank and Israel. The main
goal of the Israelis putting such checkpoints was for their own security from
the native people. As Hardt and Negri (2004) discussed in Lisa Parks' article
"Points of Departure: The Culture of US Airport Screening": "The
checkpoint is a site of biopower that represents the shift from a model of
‘national defense’ - “defense” involves a protective barrier against external
threats- to one of ‘national security’ – “security” justifies a constant
martial activity equally in the homeland and abroad". The Israeli argument
behind putting such checkpoints is to ensure their security while other ways of
securing themselves can take place. They call it a barrier, as if Palestinians
only pass through it quickly, while Palestinians call it a checkpoint due to
the long hours spent passing through it and the humiliation they go through
each and every time they need to pass from one place to another. Israelis use
their power in a way that forces Palestinians to stand up in a line, being
treated as "numbers" of criminals and feeling the spirit of defeat
inside of them.
Parks
(2007) talks about both the surveillance or the security people feel in
airports while waiting at the points of departure. However, no matter how much
invasion to people's privacy there is, people would still be treated as humans
compared to the way Israelis treat Palestinians at checkpoints. From an Israeli
perspective, they use unique techniques in treating Palestinians at
checkpoints. In order for one to pass from one side to another, they have to go
through the revolving doors that need to be pushed in order to reach the other
side. The Palestinian term for it is "Ma'ata" which refers to the
device that pulls out chicken's feathers from their skin in preparation for
sale. This is the exact same way Palestinians are treated at these checkpoints.
They need to empty their pockets, sometimes put their shoes on the x-ray
machine, take off their watches, bracelets, necklaces and belts, and even
sometimes pull up their shirts and pull down their pants so Israelis would make
sure Palestinians hold no threatening objects that might violate the "national
security" of Israel.
In
airports, passengers can be put on the black list or banned from traveling, but
in Palestine it is different. Palestinians must put their fingerprints on a
type of machine that tells Israelis all the information about them and if they
are dangerous or not. The machine shows if there is a need for a Palestinian to
be arrested or even shot. This kind of biopower is used from the Israeli
government towards Palestinians for the purpose of having power and control
over Palestinians from one side, and to have order in the way of treating them
from another side. Specific kinds of objects are banned to be carried while
passing through these checkpoints exactly like when one passes through an
airport's security check. The difference is that in an airport one travels from
one country to another, while in Palestine who have no airport to travel,
travels from one place to another in the same country using checkpoints and
going through Walls which is the "Apartheid Wall".
Such maltreatment
towards Palestinians developed through time. Israelis developed their machines
more and more to ensure the security of Israelis. Such actions are made against
Palestinians who have owned this land first. Such machines including the xray
screening process relies more heavily upon manual labor, who are the Israeli
soldiers, requiring them to inspect and frisk Palestinians, check IDs, shuffle
grey bins, and operate machinery. It is a way to fight Palestinians through
their own means to corroborate their right of existing and to decrease the
Palestinian resistance efforts such as bombing, stabbing and killing Israelis.
The Israeli
checkpoints expose new technologies of sensing, detection and scanning which
are known as Close Sensing. Close Sensing techniques employ the use of
magnetometers, x-ray machines and trace sensing devices to scrutinize personal
belongings and their fragments, the body and its interior. What distinguishes
close sensing from other forms of surveillance is the Israeli authority's
security. It is where the state has granted to supplement machine vision with
touch, through inspecting Palestinians visually and even touching them through
forcing them to take off their clothes and shoes, while walking through these
machines. Such machines already show that Palestinians hold nothing than could
be a threat the "national security" of Israel. Meanwhile, Israelis
insist on such treatments and actions to confirm their superiority upon
Palestinians. Israelis see themselves as the high social and biopolitical power
state on Palestinians.
According
to Kelly Gates in her book "Our Biometric Future", she talks about
the facial recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance in airports.
And how "modern networked systems allow data to flow from one site to
another, back and forth between state and private- sector organizations which
enables effective forms of social control". In the Israeli-Palestinian
case, an automated recognition not only to the face but to the whole identity
of a Palestinian can be found through the Israeli fingerprint machines on
checkpoints. An Automated facial and body expression analysis targets
Palestinians through different kinds of machines in different places. Palestinians
are forced to put their ten fingers on a machine that detects their fingerprint
and results a whole data about each and every one of them. Such a way is used
to have power, surveillance and control on Palestinians while passing from one
city to another using Israeli checkpoints.
Moreover,
according to Foucault (1976) in "Society Must Be Defended", he discusses
how power could be implemented from the
state towards the people in the way it chooses to define it. The normal
behaviors in a state is the right to take life or let live, but due to the high
control of a state over the biological, the right turns into the right to make
live and let die. It is all a part of biopower that Foucault talks about, where
in the Israeli state they never look at Palestinians to let them live as much
as they look at them to let them die. Also, Foucault talked about this in his
lecture which can be found in the Israeli case with Palestinians. Israelis can
also allow Palestinians to live, but in the way Israelis want, which is through
controlling Palestinians' lives. Moreover, it is the control of the rate of
birth, where Israelis control so in Palestinians. In the biopower discipline,
an individual, who in this case is the Palestinian, does not matter to the
Israeli authority because he/she is not being looked at it as a citizen or a
person as much as he/she is being looked at as a man-as-specie and
"regularized". It is a way to have power upon Palestinians not only
from an economical angle as Foucault (1976) discusses in the era of capitalism,
but also from a political angle. “It is as though power, which used to have sovereignty as its
modality or organizing schema, found itself unable to govern the economic and
political body of society that was undergoing both a demographic explosion and
industrialization”.
Israelis
try creating their own identity through their existence in Palestine. Foucault
takes his genealogy of the discourse by the state racism in the discourse of
biological racism, where the Israeli people are connected by their religion,
ethnicity, and have an inherent racial superiority -according to how they
define themselves- compared to other people who are the Palestinians. A social
state racism takes place as well through Israeli Jews identifying themselves as
the superior class, then comes the Israelis who are not Jews, then Palestinians
who are living in the Israeli state, and finally comes the last social class
who are Palestinians living in the West Bank. This shows how the Israeli
biopower can be demonstrated through ethnicity, biologically, religiously, and
even biopolitically. Moreover, in Foucaults' talk about war, discusses how was
is a power relation, which can be found in the conflict between Israelis and
Palestinians. War is racist, where it is a race war between Israelis and
Palestinians "in the sense of one subspecies of man establishing dominance
over another subspecies of man, man-as-species, and man-as-political-body"
(Foucault, 1976).
There
are many processes of being the other, and in this case as a Palestinian.
Palestinians are created as people who are "othered" to the Israelis,
being seen, looked at, categorized, rationalized and even gendered these
Palestinians through their gaze. This way of seeing them makes Palestinians
feel the surveillance they have upon them from Israelis. This itself leads to
the construction of the "other" identity which Palestinians start
having through the racial, powerful, colonial, and imperial Israeli gaze.
Moreover, Palestinians constructing themselves as the "others",
itself will give the Israelis the authority and power to define Palestinians
the way they want and not the way Palestinians themselves want to be defined
in.
To conclude, Israelis power upon
Palestinians takes place in several different ways. Israelis idea of building
the Apartheid Wall from long time ago was to have a surveillance upon them,
power and superiority. Checkpoints have always been put to have a biopower on
Palestinians, and to secure the Israeli state from the others. Yet,
Palestinians' ways of seeing such treatment from Israelis never calmed down. On
the contrary, resistance have always taken place through visual demonstrations,
protests, and even drawing on the Apartheid Wall different kinds of graffiti.
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