{"id":124581,"date":"2018-12-24T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-12-24T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=124581"},"modified":"2018-12-21T13:26:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T13:26:36","slug":"inside-banksys-the-walled-off-hotel-in-bethlehem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/12\/inside-banksys-the-walled-off-hotel-in-bethlehem\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Banksy\u2019s The Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem"},"content":{"rendered":"

We check in to Banksy\u2019s bizarre Palestinian hotel, where the hospitality is as peculiar as the message is powerful.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Banksy\u2019s Walled Off hotel in Bethlehem. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Dec 2018 – <\/em>Anonymous British street artist Banksy made headlines in October when his $1.4 million artwork Girl with Balloon self-destructed by passing through a shredder concealed in its frame at a London auction moments after it had been bought.<\/p>\n

But in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, a much larger Banksy art project \u2013 a hotel boasting \u201cthe worst view in the world\u201d \u2013 appears to be unexpectedly saving itself from similar, planned destruction.<\/p>\n

When it opened in March last year, The Walled Off Hotel \u2013 hemmed in by the eight-metre-high concrete wall built by Israel to encage Bethlehem \u2013 was supposed to be operational for only a year. But nearly two years on, as I joined those staying in one of its nine Banksy-designed rooms, it was clearly going from strength to strength.<\/p>\n

Originally, The Walled Off Hotel was intended as a temporary and provocative piece of installation art, turning the oppressive 700-kilometre-long wall that cuts through occupied Palestinian land into an improbable tourist attraction. Visitors drawn to Bethlehem by Banksy\u2019s art \u2013 both inside the hotel and on the colossal wall outside \u2013 are given a brief, but potent, taste of Palestinian life in the shadow of Israel\u2019s military infrastructure of confinement.<\/p>\n

It proved, unexpectedly, so successful that it was soon competing as a top tourist attraction with the city\u2019s traditional pilgrimage site, the reputed spot where Jesus was born, the Church of the Nativity. \u201cThe hotel has attracted 140,000 visitors \u2013 local Israelis, Palestinians, as well as internationals \u2013 since it opened,\u201d says Wisam Salsa, the hotel\u2019s Palestinian co-founder and manager. \u201cIt\u2019s given a massive boost to the Palestinian tourism industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A bust wreathed in clouds of gas from a tear gas canister. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum<\/p><\/div>\n

Exception to Banksy\u2019s rule<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Walled Off Hotel was effectively a follow-up to Banksy\u2019s \u201cDismaland Bemusement Park\u201d, created in the more familiar and safer setting of a British seaside resort. For five weeks, that installation in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, offered holidaymakers a dystopian version of a Disney-style amusement park, featuring a nuclear mushroom-cloud, medical experiments gone wrong, boat people trapped on the high seas and the Cinderella story told as a car crash.<\/p>\n

But unlike Girl with Balloon and Dismaland, Banksy appears uncharacteristically reluctant to follow through with the destruction of his Bethlehem creation. Some 21 months later, it seems to have become a permanent feature of this small city\u2019s tourist landscape.<\/p>\n

Given that Banksy is notoriously elusive, it is difficult to be sure why he has made an exception for The Walled Off Hotel. But given his well-known sympathy for the Palestinian cause, a few reasons suggest themselves. One is that, were he to abandon the hotel, it would delight the Israeli military authorities. They would love to see The Walled Off Hotel disappear \u2013 and with it, a major reason to focus on a particularly ugly aspect of Israel\u2019s occupation. In addition, dismantling the hotel might echo rather uncomfortably Israel\u2019s long-standing policy of clearing Palestinians off their land \u2013 invariably to free-up space for Jewish settlement.<\/p>\n

Israel strenuously claims the wall was built to aid security by keeping out Palestinian \u201cterrorists\u201d. But the wall\u2019s path outside The Walled Off Hotel seals off Bethlehem from one of its major holy sites, Rachel\u2019s Tomb, and has allowed Jewish religious extremists to take it over.<\/p>\n

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A version of Banksy\u2019s famous protester piece, The Walled Off Hotel, Bethlehem, March 3, 2017. (Haggai Matar)<\/p><\/div>\n

A rare success story<\/strong><\/p>\n

In sticking by the hotel, Banksy appears to have been influenced by Palestinian \u201csumud\u201d, Arabic for steadfastness, a commitment to staying put in the face of Israeli pressure and aggression. But significantly, there is a practical consideration: The Walled Off Hotel has rapidly become a rare success story in the occupied territories, boosting the struggling Palestinian economy. That has occurred in spite of Israel\u2019s best efforts to curb tourism to Bethlehem, including by making a trip through the wall and an Israeli checkpoint a time-consuming and discomfiting experience.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s attitude was highlighted last year when the interior ministry issued a directive to travel agencies warning them not to take groups of pilgrims into Bethlehem to stay overnight.\u00a0After an outcry, the government \u00adrelented, but the message was clear.<\/p>\n

Salsa notes that The Walled Off Hotel has not only attracted a new kind of visitor to Bethlehem, but has also persuaded many to spend time in other parts of the occupied West Bank, too.<\/p>\n

Salsa understands the importance of tourism personally. He was an out-of-work guide when mutual friends first introduced him to Banksy in 2005, shortly after the wall cutting off Bethlehem from nearby Jerusalem had been completed. The city was economically dead, with tourists too fearful to visit its holy sites as armed uprisings raged across the occupied territories. The Second Intifada from 2000-2005 was the Palestinians\u2019 response after Israel refused to grant them the viable state most observers had assumed was implicit in the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Banksy arrived in 2005 to spray-paint on what was then a largely pristine surface, creating a series of striking images. It unleashed a wave of local and foreign copycats. The wall in Bethlehem quickly became a giant canvas for artistic resistance, says Salsa.<\/p>\n

Much later, in 2014, Banksy came up with the idea of the hotel. Salsa found a large residential building abandoned for more than a decade because of its proximity to the wall. In secret, The Walled Off was born. \u201cIt was a crazy spot for a hotel,\u201d says Salsa. \u201cIt felt like divine intervention finding it. It was close to the main road from Jerusalem so no one could miss us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A pack of cheetahs crouch over a zebra-print sofa, where entrails snake out of a cushion. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum<\/p><\/div>\n

Palestinians\u2019 reality<\/strong><\/p>\n

Importantly, the hotel was also in one of the few areas of Bethlehem inside \u201cArea C\u201d, parts of the West Bank classified in the temporary Oslo Accords as under full Israeli control. That meant the army could not bar Israelis from visiting. \u201cNowadays there are no channels open between Palestinians and Israelis. So The Walled Off Hotel is a rare space where Israelis can visit and taste the reality lived by Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrue, Israelis mostly come to see the art. But they can\u2019t help but learn a lot more while they are here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salsa is happy that the Walled Off Hotel provides a good salary to 45 local employees and their families. His hope in setting up the hotel was to \u201cencourage more tourists to stay in Bethlehem and for them to hear our story, our voice\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Banksy\u2019s grander vision had been fully vindicated, he says. \u201cThe Walled Off Hotel gives tourists an experience of our reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it also emphasises other, creative ways to struggle and speak up. It offers art as a model of resistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hotel magnifies the Palestinian\u2019s voice. And it makes the world hear us in a way that doesn\u2019t depend on either us or the Israelis suffering more casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018The worst view in the world.\u2019 Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum<\/p><\/div>\n

Global impact<\/strong><\/p>\n

The hotel\u2019s continuing impact was underscored last month when it featured for the first time at the Palestinian stand at the annual World Travel Market in London, the largest tourism trade show in the world. The event attracts 50,000 travel agents, who conduct more than $4 billion in deals over the course of the show.<\/p>\n

Banksy had announced beforehand that he would bring a replica of one of his artworks on the wall just outside the Bethlehem hotel: cherubs trying to prise open two concrete slabs with a crowbar. He also promised a limited-edition poster showing children using one of Israel\u2019s military watchtowers as a fairground ride. A slogan underneath reads: \u201cVisit historic Palestine. The Israeli army liked it so much they never left!\u201d As a result, there was a stampede to the Palestinian stand, one of the smallest, that caught the show\u2019s organisers by surprise.<\/p>\n

Rula Maayah, the Palestinian tourism minister, praised Banksy for changing the image of Palestinian tourism by diverting younger people into the West Bank, often during a visit to Israel. \u201cHe promotes Palestine and focuses on the occupation, but at the same time he is talking about the beauty of Palestine,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

At the Walled Off Hotel, however, Israel has made it much harder to see the beauty. Most windows provide little more than a view of the wall, which dwarfs in both height and length the Berlin Wall to which it is most often compared. That is all part of the Walled Off \u201cexperience\u201d that now attracts not only wealthier visitors keen to stay in one the hotel\u2019s rooms, but a much larger audience of day trippers.<\/p>\n

So successful has the Walled Off Hotel proved in such a short space of time that even some locals concede it upstages the Church of the Nativity \u2013 at least for a proportion of visitors. A local taxi driver who was guiding two French sisters along the wall outside the hotel said many independent tourists now prioritised it ahead of the church.<\/p>\n

Only wanting to be identified as Nasser, he said: \u201cWe may not know who Banksy is, but the truth is, he has done us a huge favour with this hotel and his art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanctuary in a police state<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Dismaland created a dystopian amusement park in the midst of a fun-filled seaside resort, the Walled Off Hotel offers a small sanctuary of serenity \u2013 even if a politically charged one \u2013 in surroundings that look more like a post-apocalyptic police state.<\/p>\n

Along the top of the wall, there are innumerable surveillance cameras, as well as looming watchtowers, where ever-present Israeli soldiers remain out of view behind darkened glass. They can emerge unexpectedly, usually to make raids on the homes of unsuspecting Palestinians.<\/p>\n

When I made a trip to the Walled Off in October, I parked outside to find half a dozen armed Israeli soldiers on top of the hotel\u2019s flat roof. When one waved to me, I was left wondering whether I had been caught up in another of Banksy\u2019s famous art stunts. I hadn\u2019t. They were real \u2013 there to watch over Jewish extremists celebrating a religious holiday nearby at Rachel\u2019s Tomb.<\/p>\n

The hotel\u2019s lobby, though not the rooms, are readily accessible to the public. It is conceived as a puzzling mixture: part cheeky homage to the contrived gentility of British colonial life, part chaotic exhibition space for Banksy\u2019s subversive street art. Visitors can enjoy a British cream tea, served in the finest china, sitting under a number of Israeli surveillance cameras wall-mounted like hunting trophies or alongside a portrait of Jesus with the red dot of a marksman\u2019s laser-beam on his forehead.<\/p>\n

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The Israeli controversial separation wall is seen in front of artist Banksy’s newly opened Walled Off hotel in the Israeli occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem, on March 15, 2017. \/ AFP PHOTO \/ THOMAS COEX<\/p><\/div>\n

A history of resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n

The lobby leads to a museum that is probably the most comprehensive ever to document Israel\u2019s various methods of colonisation and control over Palestinians, and their history of resistance.<\/p>\n

At its entrance sits a dummy of Lord Balfour, the foreign secretary who 101 years ago initiated Britain\u2019s sponsorship of Palestine\u2019s colonisation. He issued the infamous Balfour Declaration promising the Palestinians\u2019 homeland to the Jewish people. Press a button and Balfour jerks into life to furiously sign the declaration on his desk. Upstairs is a large gallery exhibiting some of the best of Palestinian art, and the hotel reception organises twice-daily tours of the wall.<\/p>\n

Entry to the rooms is hidden behind a secret door, disguised as a bookcase. Guests need to wave a room key, shaped like a section of the wall, in front of a small statue of Venus that makes her breasts glow red and the door open.<\/p>\n

A stairway leads to the second and third floors, where the landings are decorated with more fading colonial splendour and Banksy art. Kitsch paintings of boats, landscapes and vases of flowers are hidden behind tight metal gauze of the kind Israel uses to protect its military Jeeps from stone-throwers.<\/p>\n

A permanent \u201cSorry \u2013 out of service\u201d sign hangs from a lift, its half-open doors revealing that it is, in fact, walled up.<\/p>\n

No mementos<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although the rooms are designed thematically by Banksy, only a few contain original artworks, most significantly in the Presidential Suite.<\/p>\n

Hotels may be used to customers taking shampoos and soaps, even the odd towel, as mementos of their stay. But at the Walled Off, the stakes are a little higher. Guests are issued with an inventory they must sign on departing, declaring that they have not pilfered any art from their room. But it is the wall itself that is the dominant presence, towering over guests as they come and go, trapping them in a narrow space between the hotel entrance and an expanse of solid grey.<\/p>\n

A proportion visit the neighbouring graffiti shop, Wall Mart, where they can get help on how to leave their mark on the concrete. Most of the casual graffiti is short-lived, with space regularly cleared so that new visitors can scrawl their messages and use art as a tool of resistance.<\/p>\n

Protest pieces<\/strong><\/p>\n

Banksy\u2019s better-known artworks, however, are saved from the spray-paint pandemonium elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The crowbar-armed cherubs he brought to London were painted in time for Christmas last year, when he recruited film director Danny Boyle \u2013 of Slumdog Millionaire fame \u2013 to stage an alternative nativity play for local families in the hotel car park. The \u201cAlternativity\u201d, featuring a real donkey and real snow produced by a machine on the Walled Off\u2019s roof, became a BBC documentary. Banksy had once again found a way to persuade prime-time TV to shine a light on Israel\u2019s oppressive wall.<\/p>\n

Another artwork is his \u201cEr sorry\u201d, a leftover from the Walled Off\u2019s \u201capologetic street party\u201d of November last year, marking the centenary of the Balfour Declaration\u2019s signing. Children from two neighbouring refugee camps were invited to wear Union-Jack crash helmets and wave charred British flags. A person dressed as Queen Elizabeth II unveiled \u201cEr Sorry\u201d stencilled into the wall. It served both as a hesitant apology on behalf of Britain and as a play on the initials of the Queen\u2019s official Latin title, Elizabeth Regina.<\/p>\n

The event, however, illustrated that Banksy\u2019s subversive message, directed chiefly at western audiences, does not always translate well to sections of the local Palestinian population. The party was hijacked by local activists who stuck a Palestinian flag into the Union Jack-adorned cake and chanted \u201cFree Palestine\u201d.<\/p>\n

Is this \u2018war tourism\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Salsa outright rejects claims from some locals and foreign critics that the hotel is exploiting Palestinian misery and is an example of \u201cwar tourism\u201d.<\/p>\n

He points out: \u201cThe Balfour party got the media interested in a story they probably would not have covered otherwise, because it lacked violence and bloodshed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds that the area of Bethlehem in which the Walled Off is located would have been killed off by the wall were it not for Banksy investing his own money and time in the project. As well as the staff, it has brought work to tour guides, taxi drivers, neighbouring and cheaper hotels, shops and petrol stations. \u201cThat is a very important form of resistance,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It is also a rare example of Palestinians reclaiming land from the Israeli army. On the other side of the wall there had been a large army camp until the hotel started drawing significant numbers of visitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe army didn\u2019t like lots of tourists taking pictures nearby, so they moved further away, out of sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eternal memories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Canadian tourist Mike Seleski, 30, visited the hotel to see Banksy\u2019s art before standing in front of the wall. He said he had heard about the Walled Off from an Israeli he befriended in Vietnam during a year travelling.<\/p>\n

This was a detour from his stay in Israel \u2013 his only stop in the occupied territories. \u201cI don\u2019t like the usual tourist experiences,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is important to hear the other side of the story when you travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

In every one of the 32 countries he has visited, he has stood to be photographed before a famous local spot holding a cardboard sign with words to reassure his worried mother: \u201cMum \u2013 I\u2019m OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Bethlehem, he said it was obvious he\u2019d take the photo in front of Banksy\u2019s art on the wall, rather than the Church of the Nativity. \u201cYou see the wall on TV and forget about it. You get on with your life. But when you stand here, you realise Palestinians don\u2019t have a choice. They simply can\u2019t ignore it.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/a> for Journalism.<\/em> The same year, Project Censored<\/a> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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