The BBC reported the news from Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. In this town, there is a square named "Menger" after a legend related to the birth of Jesus Christ. This year, an object depicting the "Nativity" of the Baby Jesus is displayed here among the rubble and barbed wire.
Bethlehem is part of the Palestinian Authority. In the autonomous Gaza Strip, more than 20,000 people have died since October 2023 due to the Israeli invasion. The history of long and barren battles has been overwritten with even more brutality. The Church of the Nativity, built on Menger Square, also attracted attention from all over the world in the spring of 2002.
This was around the time when the conflict with Israel intensified during the Palestinian resistance movement 2nd Intifada. The Israeli army launched a massive clearance campaign, imprisoning leader Arafat and trampling refugee camps. The chased Palestinian militants barricaded themselves in the Church of the Nativity, using hostages as shields.
I covered the battle that lasted nearly 40 days at this location. The church, built like a medieval fortress, housed priests, sisters, and ordinary Palestinians. At this time, Israel began building a wall separating from the Palestinian side. It was also around this time that British masked artist Banksy appeared in Bethlehem and painted murals.
Including "Love is in the Air," which depicts a Palestinian throwing a bouquet of flowers instead of a stone, a girl with a balloon, and a dove wearing a bulletproof vest, painted in Bethlehem. All of these works give a glimpse of Banksy's personality. The "Jesus Birth in the Rubble" object reported by the BBC echoes Banksy's style, which shakes humanity.
However, there was something strange about this mural left by an unknown artist during the Intifada. That is a feeling about it cannot be simplified, even if it is simple. The true identity is Banksy's "individual" perspective. In both Israel and Palestine, all conflicts in politics, religion, and history are premised on the "collectivity." He vividly transforms this into an issue of one individual humanity.
At the same time, Palestinian-American thinker Edward Said was contributing for liberal Arab and Israeli newspapers. Why isn't this conflict resolved? "The fundamental problem is that Palestinians do not exist as human beings," he wrote (May 2002 Al-Hayat). What has been forgotten is not attributes of the group, but the lives of real people who shed blood and tears.