Political Graffiti and Existence in Gaza Since October 7th

The occupied Palestinian territories have a rich history of using graffiti to express political and economic struggles and opposition. For the West Bank, for many this declined sharply in the mid-2000s with the construction of the Apartheid Wall, partly because much of the graffiti became appropriated by Westerners for personal and monetary benefit. The refugee camps across the West Bank (especially in the northern West Bank in places such as Tulkarem, Nablus, and Jenin) have become one of the few places where political graffiti remains a vibrant and organic expression of political opposition. Ted Swedenburg and Laleh Khalili have both done extensive work in their respective books.

In the Gaza Strip, for the few who have been fortunate enough to have been there, political graffiti is a thriving form of expression. It was hard to go a couple streets in Gaza City without seeing graffiti art in general; everything from congratulating a couple on marriage, to describing battles throughout the past 15 years, to accusations of corruption.

It should be stated that political graffiti in Palestine is overwhelmingly intended for a domestic audience. Even native speakers of Arabic can struggle with understanding much of the art as it is either very localized description of events, or extremely poetic. Much of this graffiti is packed with localisms that the primary intended audience, Gazans, becomes abundantly clear.

With the onset of the genocide in Gaza, political graffiti proliferated across the Strip. As it was easy for the Israelis to shut down telecommunications isolating the population, people used graffiti art for many purposes, which will be analyzed below. The purpose being to express feelings and history in the moment, as raw as possible, and specifically for those around them; to memorialize or internalize the messages.

Like past wars, it started with people using graffiti as a denoting of ownership. A house or building which was bombed would have graffiti sprawled on it stating who lived there, to ward off thieves on one hand, but also so people know that it has been visited since (both for the Palestinians and Israelis) as a form of resistance. As the war evolved, mass placement became a key component of the Israeli genocide, and people’s need became more primal, graffiti changed and then disappeared. As survival became more precarious, graffiti (or at least its publication online) more or less disappeared. People’s essential needs fundamentally changed, and hence their ability to resist it, even through graffiti then, by default, also changed.

For the purpose I shall shortly examine four pieces which I believe show how political graffiti is expressed in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

Source: Quds News Telegram.

The first is a photo from al-Shifa hospital after it was destroyed the first time, which reads “Gaza will remain ours, even if the whole world fails it.” For many Palestinians, the attacks and destruction of al-Ahli and al-Shifa hospital perfectly represent the hypocrisy of the West and the abandonment of the world to the genocide in Gaza. What was allowed (and in many cases justified) by the West in its destruction of health facilities was a consistent reminder for Palestinians of how isolated and alone they are against the Israeli state and its incessant colonization and destruction.

Source: Quds News Telegram.

The next photo is from northern Gaza and has the line “even the birds in Gaza have wings, yet they do not migrate.” A key component of Israel’s genocide has been the constant forced and largescale displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom have been displaced a dozen or more times, confined to smaller and smaller spaces. The first displacement was in late October 2023, of the northern forty percent of the Strip (all areas north of Wadi Gaza) which were home to the majority of the Strip’s residents (approximately 1.3 million, including Gaza City). At least four hundred thousand Palestinians refused the forced displacement and lived under extreme conditions; wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure, non-stop airstrikes, minimal water access, and mass burnings of agricultural land. There was a pride in staying in the north despite the extremely harsh living conditions, which was promoted in Arabic social media platforms through short speeches given by resilient residents, some of whom even quoted this graffiti, directly or indirectly. 

The last one I wish to discuss here is the most dense and localized, but I would argue is the most important and symbolic. It is a piece of art, likely in Gaza City, but unconfirmed. It has two images: on the right is a very specific image of a fist rising out of Gaza, and on the left is a big red triangle. Non-casual followers of Palestine are well acquainted at this point with the red triangle, so I do not need to describe its meaning, but the fist is less known outside of Gaza. Again, for the lucky few who have been to Gaza, they have likely walked by what was considered the second most important monument in Gaza, at Palestine square. It was a replica of an Israeli tank, with a giant fist punching through the tank and holding a pair of Israeli dog tags. The monument represents a famous Hamas operation in 2014 whereby they attacked a tank and killed at least seven Israeli soldiers.

The text on the red triangle is from a song by Ibrahim al-Ahmed song, titled “Dahhiyya Tawfan Al-Aqsa.” (Dance of the Al Aqsa Flood) The lyrics are: “The red triangle swaggers on the tank, we do not surrender, we are victorious or we die.” For those familiar with the al-Qassam videos over the past two years, the videos constantly referenced things that were going on in Gaza or the Arab world in real time. There were references to comments by a known al-Jazeera commentator, Faiz Al Duweiri, constant gratitude to Ansar Allah in Yemen, and constant refutation of Israeli claims about attacks. Al-Qassam videos are meant to speak overwhelmingly to Palestinians in Gaza first, secondarily to Palestinians in the rest of Palestine, and the rest of the world (outside of Israel) is almost never a focus. Hence, this graffiti is speaking back to al-Qassam, using their language, their songs, and their symbolism. More likely than not, this was done by someone as a response to the Israelis who have been on an internal and external propaganda war to try and create animosity towards Hamas by Palestinians. This could be read as rejecting the colonial attempt of dividing and conquering the population.

Photo Credit: Quds News Telegram.