For decades, the streets of Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, were a war zone. High walls, roadblocks and tall steel gates separated Catholics and Protestants.
But after the reconciliation, the foundations of which were laid some 20 years ago with the Good Friday Agreement, the walls of separation became so-called Peace Walls with the help of artists.
Today, the art adorning these walls is one of the more important tourist attractions in the city.
The Irish nationalist movement's utter affinity for Palestinian terrorist organizations is expressed in the incitement to violence depicted by Catholic artists. Solidarity to other national movements, such as the Catalans or Kurds, is expressed in murals lacking any violent symbolism or calls to boycott Spain or Turkey, but the wall art touching on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is completely different.
The artists, mostly in the neighborhoods dominated by the armed republican groups, update their works in accordance with developments: After Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, artwork depicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bathing in a blood-filled bathtub representing the Gaza Strip.
More recently, amid the latest Gaza border demonstrations, an image has been added of a handicapped Palestinian demonstrator in a wheelchair throwing stones at IDF soldiers. The caption says, "Oppression breeds resistance. They took his land, his legs, and finally his life."
An adjacent painting is of a dwindling map of Palestine since 1947 with a call to recognize a Palestinian state, impose economic sanctions on Israel and boycott the "apartheid state."
On the walls in the Protestant quarter, meanwhile, images of Lt. Col. John Henry Peterson – a Zionist Irishman who commanded the Hebrew Battalions in the British Army in World War I – are repeatedly vandalized by Irish nationalists.
"When you feel you belong to an oppressed people, you seek out other oppressed peoples and feel an affinity with narratives of victimization," said Dr. Katy Radford, from the Institute for Conflict Research in Belfast about her fellow countrymen's strong sympathy for the Palestinians.
"The Irish population is exposed to only one message when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict – in media, the education system, politics, pubs – and it's a completely anti-Israel message," she said.
