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Impression Ein Hud restaurant

 El Beit 

 

 

The village of Ein Hud is planned and developed by one person. Mohammed Abu al Hayja worked for more than 20 years at the Israeli National Development and Planning Committee as an engineer. At the same time, he built and developed the village of Ein Hud, where his family settled during the Naqba, and which was until recently entirely illegal.

 

Mohammed Abu Abu al Hayja’s work for Ein Hud essentially took place in three different steps. The first phase entailed getting recognition from the government and engaging the planning procedures of the state. The second phase consisted of giving a public face to the village in the form of a restaurant, which also brings work. The third phase, community planning with the help of an NGO, consists of developing the village further for tourism, while using it also as a platform for education about the plight of the Palestinians in Israel. During all this time, from 1948 till now, Abu al Hayja family have had to invent ways of surviving in an inhospitable environment, leading to a series of inventions for an architectural resistance.

 

Architectural survival techniques

The State of Israel rarely initiate building permits to the Palestinians population (not just in the Occupied Territories). The enforcement of the building law by the authorities appears through immediate demolition of construction-sites or the issuing of a demolition order to sites, which are already in a progressive building state.

 

In case where a building has already walls or in case it’s inhabited, the owner of the building will receive a demolition order and the building will not be demolished immediately.

 

This governmental attitude made the Palestinian into pragmatic but yet creative builders.

 

 

There are few rules that are applied to most of the building in the village.

 

1.   Pop-up buildings– In order to prevent the disturbances of the building authority’s inspectors the act of building took place just during weekends and Jewish holidays. That made the village in those periods very busy trying to build the foundation secretly and then using the holidays to complete the walls.

2.    Offset method- a growing family that needed a bigger space could not just apply for a building permit and extend its house but needed to make the changes again secretly.

In a reality where every two weeks an aerial photo is being taken in order to prevent illegal building, the planners had to find a way to tackle the problem.

The way it was done in Ein Hud was by offsetting the outline of the building by few meters, these way from the sky it looks the same.

3.    No Balconies– When walls need to be constructed first and as fast as possible balconies are out of option.

4.    Scenography- One of the ways to “earn” a demolition order and not to you’re your house demolished immediately is to prepare the scene ‘Living under construction’. Most of the houses, which are in construction works, has already the elementary furniture; Before installing the windows frame you need to have already a kitchen, a toilet and a living room.

 

The first public project in Ein Hud

 

The restaurant is the first public building. It is the first step towards the economic independence of the village, and currently the only main employment center. Most of the women of the village who were unemployed started working for the restaurant, cooking and serving. For some of these women it’s their fi rst real job.

 

The restaurant has been voted ‘Second-best Restaurant’ in the country. The success of the restaurant, however, is not just an economic success; with the announcement of the vote on prime time, it was the fi rst chance for the villagers, till then virtually unknown, to be acknowledged by the Israelis. It was the fi rst time they could tell their story, their rich cultural history and their tragedy, not by words but by their local dishes and by being hospitable to the many visitors who took the winding, potholed, path up the mountain.

 

The long term development strategy

 

Tourists from all over the country come to eat in the restaurant and then discover the gorgeous landscape, the charming hospitality but also the sounds of the generators that supply electricity to the village, the lack of infrastructure such as road and parking spaces, the lack of water, public transportation etc. and then the photos of the villagers old homes hanged on the wall but also can be observed through the window. Their old village that is colonized by a group of artists who fell in love in someone else’s homes, made stone and arches.

 

The colonized village, Ein Hod is one of the biggest tourist attraction in the country. They have transformed the Palestinian homes into a bohemian art and craft environment. The old mosque of the village have transformed into a bar-restaurant.

But this days its almost empty, since Ein Hud refugees proved them self to be much better cooks the local tourist who come to get some “arti” ambient in Ein Hod rather drive for five minutes and eat in Ein Hud.

 

What the villagers could not do through activism, demonstrations, court cases etc. they discovered they could due through tourism.

 

 

Text by Malkit Shoshan

 

Photos by Nisreen Abu El Hayja (one of the restaurant managers)

 

1 June 2007