The Jerusalem Envelope

For my first semester history credit, I chose to enroll in Modern Middle East History, a class that attempts to tackle many of the misconceptions of the Middle East, a region often included in the Orient. One of the very first articles we read was by Edward Said, an author notorious far beyond our AP English class for his writing on the Middle East and the concept of orientalism.

Before I introduce the Jerusalem Envelope, a topic I did substantial research on during the class, it is necessary to make a brief digression. In Said's works, he discusses how a word or concept becomes an "-ism." How could the label "Oriental" or the "Orient" develop into something so much greater than a derogatory term coined to classify an individual from a specific region? The answer lies in repeated oppression of non-western, non-European individuals over the course of hundreds of years. In the same way race has developed into racism, the orient has become orientalism because what started as a classification to describe a group divided by language, culture, and geographic region, developed into a vicious tool to accelerate western dominance. By the time a classification has become an "-ism," there is no longer a simple answer to "how can it be solved?"

The answer must be x, right? 

One clear example of the deep rooted nature of orientalism lies in the border wall on the divide between Jerusalem and Palestine, often referred to as the Jerusalem Envelope. This border wall is nothing like Trump's ideal long wall on the southern border of the United States, and it is nothing like the Great Wall of China. This particular wall is unique because the boundaries it is designed to divide are incredibly intricate; on any road, a family's street may be surrounded by the wall on three out of the four sides...

The history behind the wall's construction is complex and stems from the Arab-Israeli Conflict, starting originally in 1947. Arab nationalism and interest in protecting religious and national homeland has driven the conflict over the last 70 years (this is the extremely condensed version of the story).

On this wall, individuals from both sides have used the wall as a canvas for expressing their distaste for their confinement. The wall is famous for its graffiti that attempts to beautify and in some cases "uglify" the gray blocks. Local artists and often times civilians without any artistic background write messages on the wall that have a range of tone and meaning. On the most optimistic end, messages of love and unity appear in images and words; however the wall is also littered with messages of hopelessness and death. Within the last decade, Banksy, a famous European street artist has attracted tourists to the wall after creating a gallery walk of work depicting artificial cracks in the wall.

His artwork has inspired countless other European artists to come to the wall and use it for murals or other displays of all sizes and forms in attempt to add color and beauty to the otherwise gray and expansive emptiness. However, this begs the question: Isn't this European art on the wall the EXACT definition of orientalism?

In essence, the European street artists are inserting themselves in a "charity" of artwork that they have no place in. The Arab-Israeli Conflict is a struggle that excludes European interests and military intervention; therefore, in attempting to beautify the wall, European artists show that it isn't beautiful enough without outside intervention. They show that the other is incapable of making light of a decade old struggle. They show that western culture has the upper hand in handling conflicts. They subtly reinforce Orientalism in the same way a microaggression subtly reinforces racism.

In this image of one of Banksy's paintings on the wall, he depicts children looking for a more ideal reality, an escape to a warm beautiful island, maybe even a vacation.

Those kids won't be taking a vacation anytime soon.