BOMB IT

“Your heart is a weapon the size of your fist. Keep fighting, Keep loving.”

As seen on the wall in Palestine: Image courtesy of P.O.W. / Santas Ghetto

The people in Gaza are facing a serious humanitarian crisis since Israel closed the border on Friday after rocket attacks on Southern Israel. This closure blocks the entrance of fuel, food, and medicine into Gaza and there are currently fuel and food shortages. Hospitals are in critical danger without access to electricity.

“Gaza’s 1.5 million residents are struggling to cope without electricity and other basic necessities” as the result of the “Israeli blockade. Hospitals have begun to run short of fuel for generators, and sewage has spilled out onto the streets. “

View this Al Jazeera English video of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

But the wall has literally been blown apart:

“Yesterday people started pouring across the wall into Egypt. Gaza is often described as the world’s largest prison. If so, then the world is witnessing one of the biggest ever breakouts. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have poured across the border into Egypt, after a series of explosions breached the steel wall which divides the two territories. ”

Watch Al Jazeera English video coverage of the situation here

photo: Eric Westervelt, NPR

Over this past Christmas season a group of graffiti artists, including Banksy, traveled to Bethlehem, the West Bank city where Jesus Christ was born. The artist collective painted the West Bank barrier, a 400-plus mile-long mix of cement walls, fencing and barbed wire that separates the people of Palestine and Israel.

photo: Eric Westervelt, NPR

photo: Eric Westervelt, NPR

In addition to the public paintings the group of artists also set up this year’s Santas Ghetto in Bethlehem, where they sold art to profit children’s charities. Here’s what one local said about the visitors:

“It’s important for international artists to come to Palestine and express the situation here in their art. And it’s a start. You know we don’t have art galleries in Palestine,” says Palestinian painter and sculptor Souleiman Mansour.

“The situation here is very strange and contradictory and also absurd,” he says. “And this is heaven for contemporary artists because they deal with these subjects.”

To read and hear the whole story visit NPR’s coverage here

For more amazing pics of the art on the 436 mile long wall separating Palestine and Israel check out this blog

You can watch the BBC’s video coverage of “Holy Land Graffiti” below and hear what Banksy has to say: