The Walled Off Hotel, the separation wall, and the Balfour balls-up

The Walled Off Hotel, in Bethlehem, is a work of Banksy genius. That’s what we think, anyway. Other opinions are available. We’ll get to those in a bit. For now, here’s the pitch.

The Walled Off is a nine-room hotel that sits in the shadow of the eight-foot-high wall that separates Israel from the Palestinian Territories. From the name of the hotel – a play on the ‘Waldorf’ – onwards, everything inside slightly skews reality and plays with the expectations of a typical hotel guest. Walking through the heavy red velvet curtains which hang at the entrance door, visitors feel as though they’ve entered some sort of colonial dystopian nightmare. Welcome to the hotel, the Walled Off boasts, with ‘the worst view in the world’.