Venice Biennale exhibition explores how Palestinians have become foreigners everywhere [Video]

Culturally speaking I’m a Christian, so I feel I’ve always known about Bethlehem. As a teenager, I travelled around the Holy Land mesmerised by the contemporary transformation of biblical sites: the garden of Gethsemane a fumy bus station; Gaza, the city of giants, bombarded with rockets.

It was 1988 and the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising) had begun in protest on the 20th anniversary of the Naksa (Israel’s 1967 annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip). Demonstrations became street battles where children threw stones at nervous young soldiers who returned gunfire – often with lethal results. Bethlehem is near the West Bank border, which meant it was often the site of clashes and inaccessible to outsiders. I never got there.

Because Bethlehem eluded me in 1988, my encounter with the exhibition South West Bankat this year’s Venice Biennale was affecting. South West Bank presents work made by 20 artists who are based permanently in the area, or who participated in …