Photo credit: Unknown
Date taken: April 4, 2004
Location: Husna, West Bank, Palestine
The blog’s first ever Photo of the Week feature comes from the village of Husan just west of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. This 2004 photograph shows two children eating snacks and walking down a sidewalk showing evidence of an earlier rain. In the background is a graffiti mural showing Islamic phrases and a leaning and off-colored palm tree framing the Ka’bah and Masjid An-Nabawi.
What really gives this photograph life is the mural’s bold blend of art and religion. Graffiti in Palestine is quite common and serves many functions, mainly as loud, politicized, or religion-oriented forms of expression. Husan’s graffiti scene is no different.
On a side note, the shrinking village of Husan is one of the most evident examples of illegal Israeli land annexation. Just a few weeks before this photograph was taken, the Israeli army decreed order #T/31/04 to seize large tracts of Husan’s land “for military purposes”. The apartheid wall, which was built soon after the military order, uprooted dozens of families and their tree groves.
The graffiti is eerily beautiful, the artist is talented…..and, the boys look like young boys anywhere….cute kids… My heart aches that they should live in such chaos with bullies…..