Trump's love of walls mocked in West Bank barrier graffiti

Giant spray-painted images mocking Donald Trump and his love of walls have appeared on the 25 foot barricades in Bethlehem.

Two huge murals have appeared on the barrier separating the West Bank from Israel, lampooning the US President and his support for separation walls.

The pop-up art comes in the week the American leader pressured Mexico not to publicly oppose his plan to have it pay for a border wall that he says is needed to stop illegal immigration to the United States. 

"You know, you look at Israel – Israel has a wall and everyone said do not build a wall, walls do not work — 99.9 percent of people trying to come across that wall cannot get across and more," Trump told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, according to the transcript of the phone call in January.

"Bibi Netanyahu told me the wall works," he added, using Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's nickname.

Netanyahu was in January forced to apologise to the Mexican president for praising the wall as a "great success, great idea" in a tweet.

"I'm going to build you a brother," the US leader tells the wall in one mural, in a gesture mimicing him touching the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the holy prayer site for Jews, during his visit to the region in May.

In another, he hugs an Israeli army watch-tower, with heart-shaped emojis added alongside paint splashes and soot stains left by Palestinian demonstrations.

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The artist, who goes by the alias @LushSux and who Australian media have said comes from Melbourne, told Newsweek: "I just have seen that Trump loves border walls, so since I'm at one of the biggest yet somehow not so well known ones in the world I thought I'd paint Mr Trump on it."

British graffiti artist Banksy has also left famous artworks on the wall that criticise the Israeli government's policies. He recently opened a nine-room hotel in the West Bank city, known as the "Walled Off Hotel" and offering guests the "worst view in the world".

Palestinians consider the wall, which was built following the start of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, to be an Israeli tool to separate and subjugate them, as well as an attempt to siphon off sections of West Bank land.

Israel says it's needed for security.