The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
– Aristotle

‘No want, no need.’ Theodor Herzl, ‘Adam Kadmon’ in the modern conceptualisation of a Jewish State.

The founding of the State of Israel and the war that followed is known as the ‘Nakba’ (‘catastrophe’) to Palestinians, who every year memorialise their expulsion and the destruction of over 400 villages by Israeli paramilitaries and militants.

Towards the end of the war in 1948, UN Resolution 194 is passed, stating the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were forced out from or fled their homes during the war. The key is an iconic symbol for Palestinian refugees, representing the keys to the homes that fleeing Palestinians took with them (homes that have either since been destroyed, or that they physically cannot return to).

‘The people of Israel live’ (best bad translation I can do). A new state seems to be the answer to countless millennial prayers…

…while the history of the price paid by the Palestinians is suppressed. (The graffiti reads ‘Remember, people of Israel, the Nakba’ – a take on the customary urge to ‘Remember, people of Israel, the Holocaust).

Early Prime Ministers such as David Ben Gurion (the first) and Golda Meir navigate Israel through the first decades of the state, alternatively fighting wars, settling the land and crafting the ‘desired’ Jewish-Israeli identity (which was of a Eurocentric nature, discriminating against and repressing against the culture and languages of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (Mizrahim). (‘Har Roshmore’ is a play on words, referencing both Mount Rushmore and the Hebrew term for ‘head of state’).

The turnaround of 1967’s Six Day War weaves an aura of invincibility around Israel and its army, and territory in Jerusalem captured from Jordan creates a physically united Israeli capital city for the first time, with the subsequent annexation of East Jerusalem not recognised under international law.

The events surrounding 1973’s Yom Kippur War shatter the illusion of imperviousness and cast a long shadow over Golda Meir’s premiership. Meir also continues the Socialist-Zionist parties’ policy of discriminating against Mizrahim.

The intractability of the conflict and its pervasiveness in Israeli society and life, including an uprising and a string of suicide bombings in the ’80s and ’90s, necessitate a shorthand term for the situation, which is simply…’the situation’.

The 1990-91 Gulf War also sees an outside player make its mark on Israel, as the threat of chemical weapons from Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime means gas masks become mandatory for all Israeli citizens.

The separation wall, East Jerusalem. Billed as a security measure, the wall is considerably longer than the Green Line, snaking around settlements and including them ‘inside’ Israel. In addition to the land-grab, the wall is effectively useless as a security barrier – parts are unfinished, it stops dead in the south, and it does not stop 30 – 40,000 Palestinians entering Israel each day to work.

Into the 2000s, and rocket and missiles form an increasing part of everyday life in north and south Israel and throughout the Gaza Strip, launched by (respectively) Hezbollah, Hamas and the IDF. (NB. This photo was taken in 2011; the graffiti has since been removed).

Meanwhile, the ever-tightening strictures of an omnipresent and highly conservative Rabbinate generates increasingly vitriolic backlashes.

A pun on the phrase “Allah-hu Akbar” (meaning “God is great”), which has often been reported as being heard before a suicide bomber detonates themselves. Here, the bomber is an ultra-Orthodox Jew, and the Hebrew says “challah” instead of “allah”. Once again, the growing extremism of religious Jewry draws comment.

“The Temple will be built quickly in our days” (Hebron) The Messianic zeal of settlers expresses itself through calls for the third Temple to be built in Jerusalem (in the location of the first two Temples, i.e. where the Dome of the Rock currently stands). Hebron provides one of the starkest examples of the sickly atmosphere in the Occupied Territories.

“Price Tag” Militant displays of vengeance by settlers against actions perceived to be harming the settlement project have become a common, and destructive, feature of ‘the situation’. This graffiti appears alongside buildings and cars which have been set alight by settlers, conveying the message that that is the ‘price paid’ for attacking their interests.

‘IDF over all’. Two significant military operations in four years against Gaza trigger accusations of fascism against the Israeli government and its army.

‘It’s not you, it’s me’. Binyamin Netanyahu, poster boy for the schisms in Israel, has done more than most to puncture hopes for peace and pander to the ultra-Orthodox segments of Israeli society. For these reasons, he manages to be simultaneously reviled and in command of the popular vote.

Prior to the 2013 Israeli elections, the mutant offspring of the Likud and Yisrael Beteinu parties has seen this tag spring up across Tel Aviv – ‘Just not Bieberman’ (a compound of Bibi and Lieberman, respective heads of those parties).

The 2014 Israel-Gaza War, the longest and bloodiest yet, caused the deaths of 551 children, around half of those in July alone. This wall in Aida Refugee Camp is in memory of them.

Not Israel’s history, but certainly the only way to ensure its future. Submitted by Emma Louise Williams