And from the asphalt dilemma of childhood to the asphalt dilemma of adolescence: eight years after, I was part of the first ‘flow’ of prisoners ‘unearthed’ from their homes, sight-screened during the invasion of the ‘West Bank’ in 2002. With the number of Palestinian prisoners increasing, new prisons were built to lodge them; worth mentioning is the fact that those new prison sections only represented a small area of land around which thick barbed wire was placed, also made of bitumen material, covered by kaki and thick tissue material.

I was one of those who were displaced to new prisoners where I had to sleep on the floor which had recently been covered with bitumen, and witnessed the ‘joy’ of embracing that ‘nice’ material with its ‘pleasant’ smell, during three long days, until they decided to provide us with rugs in the form of earth covers.

After forty-five black days of imprisonment, the Judge of the Military Court – distinguished by its back colour tent to make the difference with the prisoners’ tents – had decided I am not considered a danger to the state of Israel, and I was released to discover that the streets of Ramallah had been transformed into blocks of solid bitumen in the form of bitumen material spread out everywhere; all roads had been destroyed and become blocks of raw material made of cement, bitumen and sand after the aggressive intrusion of military tank-busters.

Thanks to the present project, I am probably accomplishing a process of ‘killing in me’ the artist that I used to be, at least from two points of view: first, by replacing the traditional colour material that I was accustomed to use before by bitumen material as a unique intermediary to express myself. Secondly, I have totally switched my personal view of my own paintings from a vertical point to a horizontal one, completely ignoring the particular nature of the material used.

I wonder whether I was exteriorising the dark side in me into a form of hatred of the occupation of my homeland.

The same occupation which is accomplishing its sixtieth anniversary without a single feeling of guilt and without realising that it is high time it retires.

Paris, May 2008