Behind this piece lies a true story even more striking than the artwork itself. In 2009, the director of a zoo in Gaza could not bring in live zebras because of the Israeli blockade of the territory. Rather than disappoint visitors, he painted two ordinary donkeys with black and white stripes and put them on show as “zebras”. The story made headlines around the world, and years later, during his covert visit to Gaza in 2015, Banksy made a piece that refers directly to it.

Banksy’s intervention is described as a scene in which a figure “washes” away these stripes with a brush or a cloth, scrubbing off the false identity, and the title “Washing Zebra Stripes” most likely points to this reading. The image stands as a striking metaphor for presenting something fake as “real” through mere appearance, and for how far the blockade and isolation push everyday life into the absurd.

This piece carries one of Banksy’s sharpest social and political comments. It shows how a society under blockade is forced to turn even the most ordinary form of entertainment into theatre, into an act of pretending.