Landscapes of Scripture and of Conflict: Cultural Memories and the Israeli West Bank Barrier

Abstract

As an important site of memory for each of the three monotheistic religions, the ‘Holy Land’ is one of the most culturally significant and often-imagined landscapes in the world. Today, this landscape is the setting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has witnessed violence throughout history, but, with the erection of the Israeli West Bank Barrier, conflict is now physically inscribed into the land. The barrier has received global attention, not only in the media, but also in a range of cultural products, including (illustrated) books, graphic novels, and films. However, scholarship has yet to address explorations of the structure, which has a marked visual and visceral effect, in aesthetic media. This article uses methodologies developed by memory studies to analyse a number of such cultural interrogations of the barrier, including Christmas Card, a viral image ascribed to the street artist Banksy, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a vanishing landscape by Raja Shehadeh, and the Simone Bitton’s documentary film Mur/Wall. I argue that all these works reference cultural memories related to the Holy Land and evoke the loss of the biblical landscape. In such invocations, the current conflict is grafted onto cultural memory in order to mediate it for geographically disparate audiences and to create awareness of the contemporary situation in this all but holy land.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Claire Bacher and Kate Mitchell for their insights and suggestions. A special thank you goes to Osama Elewat, who not only took me along the barrier, he also taught me more about its destructive impact than any book or news report ever could have done.