February 25, 2009 • 12:37 pm
This is at once frightening, dystopian but also plausible within the talk of two states, land-swaps, and the various segments of the peace process. Clinton proposed a bizarre system of separate (read: Palestinian) access points and passageways for the Temple Mount/al Haram al Sharif in 2000. Yet these bypass roads and elevated spaces are talked about in the vaguest and most removed architectural sense in the always vague talk of peace in Palestine. How to preserve the settler-only roads while allowing for contiguous national space on the West Bank? How to connect Gaza and the West Bank? By elevated urban passages — no, enclaves! Of course!
To quote BLDGBLOG:
“This thesis takes a formal approach to understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by studying mechanisms of control within the West Bank. The occupation of the West Bank has had tremendous effects on the urban fabric of the region because it operates spatially. Through the conflict, new ways of imagining territory have been needed to multiply a single sovereign territory into many. It is only through the overlapping of two separate political geographies that they are able to inhabit the same landscape.
“The Oslo Accords have been integral to this process of division. By defining various control regimes, the Accords have created a fragmented landscape of isolated Palestinian enclaves and Israeli settlements. The intertwined nature of these fragments makes it impossible to divide the two states easily. By connecting the fragments through a series of under- and overpasses, the border between the two states has shifted vertically.
“One feature of the Oslo Accords is the bypass road which links Israeli settlements to Israel, bypassing Palestinian areas in the process. These are essential to the freedom of movement for the settlers within the Occupied Territories. Extrapolating on the bypass, this thesis explores the ramifications of a continuous infrastructural network linking the fragmented landscape of Palestinian enclaves. In the process, a continuous form of urbanization has been developed to allow for the growth and expansion of the Palestinian state. Ultimately, this thesis questions the potential absurdity of partition strategies within the West Bank and Gaza Strip by attempting to realize them.”
Two excellent books on the subject of architecture within the occupation of Palestine are Hollow Land by Eyal Weizman and An Aesthetic Occupation by Daniel Bertrand Monk.
Filed under: Israel/Palestine , architecture, bldgblog, bypass urbanism, Daniel Bertrand Monk, Eyal Weizman, occupation
February 22, 2009 • 10:49 am
A recent Huff Post of mine.
They can aim sea, sky, and earth at me, but they cannot root the aroma of coffee out of me. I shall make my coffee now. I will drink the coffee now. Right now, I will be sated with the aroma of coffee, that I may at least distinguish myself from a sheep and live one more day, or die, with the aroma of coffee all around me.
So begins a passage from Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982. Under the terror of jets and shelling, the Israeli siege of Beirut, Darwish is making coffee. He takes it seriously, a refuge from the war and a brew to other thoughts. “Coffee should not be drunk in a hurry,” he writes. “It is the sister of time, and should be sipped slowly, slowly. Coffee is the sound of taste, the sound for the aroma. It is a meditation and a plunge into memories and the soul.”
Read the rest here.
Filed under: Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Writing , huffington post, Mahmoud Darwish
February 18, 2009 • 1:31 pm
Palestine c/o Venice marks the first Palestinian participation at the Venice Biennale. Rather than adopt one theme, the exhibition takes on a conceptual framework that embraces the Palestinian people questioning the disproportionate use of the media image of nameless faces and voiceless people. Two of the art projects are collaborative interventions with diverse Palestinian communities whose members will travel to Venice to participate in the art performance and/or the Symposium.
Via e-flux.
Filed under: Israel/Palestine , art, Palestine, Palestine c/o, Venice Biennale
The sale of doormats featuring the Star of David, enabling Syrians to express their anger with Israel every time they enter or leave their homes, went up in Damascus during the Gaza war. But what Syria calls the “steadfast” position, combining alliance with Iran, support for Hezbollah and Hamas, hostility to Israel and opposition to the policies of the United States, has for some time been less monolithic than it once appeared.
From the Guardian. Read Ian Black’s interview here.
“An ambassador is important,” Assad said. “Sending these delegations is important. This number of congressmen coming to Syria is a good gesture. It shows that this administration wants to see dialogue with Syria. What we have heard from them – Obama, Clinton and others – is positive.” But he added: “We are still in the period of gestures and signals. There is nothing real yet.”
Filed under: Media, Syria , Guardian
February 10, 2009 • 11:49 am
UPDATE: Yesterday Philip Rizk was released. The Germans are asking more questions. The Egyptians still detained and always detained, alongside this recent arrest, suggest a ratcheting up of dissident crackdown, not only on Mubarak’s national politics, but their broad attack on any who question their policy with Israel, Hamas, and Fatah.
CAIRO — State security came for Philip Rizk on Friday night. He had just finished a six-mile protest walk with about 15 friends to raise support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip when he was detained for hours and then hustled into an unmarked van and driven off. He has not been seen or heard from since.
From Michael Slackman in the NYT. Go here for all updates on Philip Rizk, including more photos from the recent AUC protest. Also here and here.
Philip’s blog Tabula Gaza is excellent. Just one quote from notes of a conversation he had with a doctor in Gaza during the war:
The numbers of death and injured reported in the media are far below reality as the media is not able to cover incidents as they unfold. I know of cases where homes were surrounded by the Israeli army and people inside gave themselves up and were shot anyway when they exited.
When bakeries open there are thousands lining up to get their share of breadA clinic near my hospital was hit by an Israeli missile earlier today
What is taking place is a massacre, more than a massacre
Almost all the cases I saw today at the hospital were civilians, many women and children. This is not an attack on Hamas, it is on the most innocent of people in Gaza
6 ambulance staff members have been killed. Two ambulances were hit. Nothing is safe, nowhere is safe. No moving vehicle is safe. We are afraid for our lives. There is no differentiation between Hamas and Fatah or anyone else
We have witnessed weapons we have never seen before in our lives. Some explode in the sky and scatter bombs all over. Sporadically. I have smelt smells from some of the burns and wounds that I have never before witnessed
Filed under: Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Media , Philip Rizk
Robin Yassin-Kassab writes on EI:
Hamas isn’t Hizballah and Gaza isn’t Lebanon. The resistance in Gaza — which includes leftist and nationalist as well as Islamist forces — doesn’t have mountains to fight in. It has no strategic depth. It doesn’t have Syria behind it to keep supply lines open; instead it has Israel’s wall and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s goons. Lebanese civilians can flee north and east, while Gaza’s repeat-refugees have no escape. The Lebanese have their farms, and supplies from outside; Gaza has been under total siege for years. Hizballah has remarkable discipline and is surely the best-trained, most disciplined force in the region. Although it has made great strides, Hamas is still undisciplined. Crucially, Hizballah has air-tight intelligence control in Lebanon, while Gaza contains collaborators like maggots in a corpse.
But Hamas is still standing. On the rare occasions when Israel actually fought — rather than just called in air strikes — its soldiers reported “ferocious” resistance. Hamas withstood 22 days of the most barbaric bombing Zionism has yet stooped to, and did not surrender. Rocket fire continued from Gaza after Israel declared its unilateral ceasefire.
Let’s put this in context. In 1947-48 Zionist militias drove out more than 700,000 Palestinians without too much trouble. In 1967 it took Israel six days to destroy the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies, and to capture the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. Zionism’s last “victory” was the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Beirut in 1982 — if it was a victory.
The long and bloody occupation of Lebanon gave birth to new forms of resistance. Where Arab states and armies had failed, popular resistance removed American and French forces from Beirut, and then steadily rolled back the Israelis. The first suicide bomber of the conflict was a Marxist woman of Christian background.
Filed under: Israel/Palestine, Lebanon , Hamas, Hizballah, resistance, Robin Yassin-Kassab
February 5, 2009 • 1:39 pm
Sometime in the late 19th century:
And today:
It’s a high of 70 degrees today.
Filed under: Photos, Syria , old city
February 4, 2009 • 10:12 pm
