Graffiti depicting Trump appears on West Bank wall
BETHELEHEM, West Bank — Two murals showing an oversized President Donald Trump have appeared on Israel’s West Bank separation barrier, just yards from where the elusive artist Banksy decorated a hotel earlier this year.
The new drawings popped up on the edge of Bethlehem, the Palestinian city where the barrier largely consists of a wall of towering slabs of concrete.
Inonescene,trumpisshown hugging and kissing a real Israeli army watchtower built into the wall, as his left arm reaches around the tower. Little pink hearts flutter from Trump’s mouth.
In another drawing, Trump is depicted wearing a Jewish skullcap and placing a hand a wall — a scene taken from the U.S. president’s May visittojerusalem’swesternwall, the holiest site where Jews can pray. A cartoon “thought bubble” next to him says, “I’m going to build you a brother,” a possible reference to Trump’s plans to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
The murals were signed “lushsux” — a signature that according to a 2016 report by the Australian newspaper “The Age” has been used in the past by a Melbourne street artist. The artist was among those who participated in a Banksy show in Britain in 2015, the report said.
A Twitter account in the name “lushsux” published the mural of Trump with his hand on a wall on Monday. The second mural was seen by an Associated Press cameraman for the first time Friday.
The new graffiti is just a few meters (yards) from “The Walled Off Hotel,” a Palestinian-run guest house that opened earlier this year and sarcastically bills itself as having the “worst view in the world.”
The nine-room hotel was decorated with Banksy’s trademark political murals, including one in “Banksy’s Room” that shows a masked Palestinian and a helmeted Israeli soldier in a pillow fight.
Israel began building the barrier a decade ago, at the height of an armed Palestinian uprising, saying the divider is needed to keep suicide bombers and gunmen from entering Israel.