Yara Issa

Humans have used painting since ancient times as a way of expressing their ideas and documenting the events they live in. Many trace the art of graffiti to ancient times, whose paintings were an essential means of identification by historians, such as Pharaonic, Greek and Roman civilizations.

For others, it is simply a form of vandalism, especially since most of the cartoons are on walls used by an unidentified artist without the permission of the owner. For other security reasons, many governments place this art under the crime punishable by law. .

Modern graffiti art originated in the 1960s in the African neighborhoods of New York, which were suffering from racism and poor living conditions, in conjunction with the spread of hip-hop music, and thus announced the start of the art of rebellion, and the Graffiti revolution moved to the Arab countries as an outlet for citizens in the presence of governments that restrict freedoms and deny Rights.

Graffiti against the occupation
The Palestinian street was buzzing with its walls that bore the pain of the Palestinian cause at the beginning of the first intifada, as a means to resist the Israeli occupation through paintings spread in alleys and squares glorifying martyrs and prisoners, and urged through a series of slogans to increase national awareness and highlight the crimes of the occupation and its practices.

This art has also played a major role in bringing the reality of what is happening to many international media and Palestinian stakeholders.

Some of the most famous cartoons of the time were Handala, the map of Palestine, prison bars, barbed wire and many others. The media also reported on slogans such as "Free Arab Palestine" and "Freedom for the Prisoners of Occupation" among others.

Later, many drawings were published in the West Bank to express the Palestinians' rejection of the apartheid wall erected by the occupation authorities in 2000, to isolate the West Bank from Jerusalem and the occupied territories in 1948. Since then, the West Bank has become a destination for many graffiti artists who shared many wall paintings with Residents of the West Bank.

Lebanon's graffiti chronicles its sectarian divide
Graffiti in Lebanon has chronicled its wars since 1975. The book published in French by the Lebanese journalist Maria Shakhtoura, "The Graffiti War - Lebanon 1975-1977" is one of the most important references in the history of graffiti. He talked about the mixing of political slogans with moral ugliness and documented many battles taking place during the war.

Because of the lack of censorship and the spread of chaos, the slogans on the walls have been mixed between sectarian, racist, political and propaganda slogans.

Perhaps the differences were apparent at the time between the two eastern districts of Beirut, which demanded the removal of the Palestinians from Lebanese territory and the unification of Christians.

After the end of the civil war, the Lebanese parties and factions exploited this art to serve their interests, and now see their streets filled with slogans and slogans to serve the interests of the dominant party.

However, in Lebanon, graffiti also played an important role in supporting civil affairs and in confronting racist and sectarian policies.

Many walls of one revolution
The Arab regimes did not succeed in deterring their people from expressing their rejection of their repressive policies and rebelling against their practices of restricting freedom that was about to become a burial of oppression and marginalization, creating a free space in which what could not be said by other means.

The popular resentment reached its climax with the beginning of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, accompanied by the drawing of the first graffiti during the Kasbah sit-ins outside the headquarters of the Prime Ministry by a group called itself "the people of the cave", and later formed large groups of young people interested in the art of graffiti, which expressed its positions on social and political issues Many Tunisians were impressed.

In Egypt, during the January Revolution, the walls - specifically in Tahrir Square - embraced drawings that mocked the symbols of power and reflected the hegemony of the regime at the time. The authorities simply erased many of the murals, the most important of which was the huge mural, which was titled "Who Costed the Match." ".

Also in Cairo, the French artist of Tunisian origin, El Sayed, and his team completed a project called "Caligraphy", a mixture of graffiti and Arabic letters, by drawing a giant paint on more than fifty buildings in the Mansheyet Nasser neighborhood, which included the phrase " If anyone wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes. "

In Syria, the first sparks of rebellion against the regime began from a phrase written by children on the wall of a school in the city of Daraa, whose consequences evolved into a state of civil disobedience after the authorities arrested the children and soon turned into a revolution throughout the country.

Political graffiti did not stop at the Syrian revolution, but extended to many Arab countries, such as Yemen, Sudan, Algeria, and others.The policy of gagging prompted the Arab to search for ways to revolt against power.Graffiti was one of them, and he bore the responsibility to express people's concerns and aspirations.