Is it difficult to work as an
architect in Palestine?
Like every other Palestinian in the West Bank
and Gaza, I am
living under a military occupation. I am checked everywhere I go. I cannot
follow a building I am constructing in Gaza, because they almost always refuse to
allow me to enter. To follow a building site in Ramallah, every morning I have
to check that there is no military curfew - and later on, I might not be allowed
to pass through all the checkpoints. So there is no way I can plan my day as a
European architect might do. Going from Bethlehem to Ramallah should normally take 30
minutes, today it takes a whole day – and that’s if you can even get there. This
creates unexpected situations that become sources of inspiration for my
buildings. I often doubt whether architecture is the best instrument to
communicate such content and feeling, but it is the only instrument I
have.
How has the situation in Palestine influenced your
architecture?
When I started working
in Palestine, I
wondered about the meaning of creating architecture in this place. My concern
was to find a means, a language, to communicate through architecture. I began to
consider buildings as sculpture. I watched what was happening around me, the
urban and architectural context, the unplanned architecture of East Jerusalem. I took this way of building as a lesson, I
learned to make architecture through something which did not apparently look
like architecture. Discussions in Palestine are often reduced to conversations
about symmetry, columns and arches. I often find myself talking to a client who
wants to build arches, trying to convince him that arches are more in the Roman
than the Islamic tradition. Whereas in my sketches - I don’t know how or why -
architecture undergoes twists to reach an unstable form. I am attracted by what
surrounds me, by the instability and devastation of the houses. I’ve wondered
for example, what has happened to my values? Which new signs should we make for
a contemporary culture? Is it possible to think of our extraordinary past,
without forgetting our contemporary identity, our everyday life? I have great
appreciation for those of my colleagues who work on historical buildings, but I
perceive a tearing emptiness in thinking about contemporary architecture in
Palestine. Our
experiences of everyday life are experiences of fragmentation and spontaneity.
It’s sufficient to observe Jerusalem to understand. The Palestinian
population is not allowed to build new houses, even if the demand for them is
great. So, during the Jewish Passover, when council employees are on holiday,
the Palestinians in Jerusalem put together a house in a few days,
forced into illegality by discriminatory rules, by the absurd distinction
between Jews and not-Jews. I try to observe this by changing the viewpoint,
recognising in this behaviour a true human instinct to survive. If law does not
respect life, life destroys the law. There has to be reciprocity between law and
life, otherwise the law is endlessly violated. It is a matter of
survival.
How have you interpreted this
urban and social condition in your
architecture?
My buildings have twisted walls, always on the
edge of collapse. Urban planning does not exist for Palestinians. Planning is
only used by the Israeli authorities to build new settlements. Thus the
Palestinian town must develop itself as it can. I have tried to learn from the
transformations of this sort of town.
Entering Ramallah, facing the
refugee camp of Qalandia, there is a strange building you worked on, with a
façade that seems ready to collapse . . .
When I was put in charge
of a large building for the Red Cross, ten floors had already been built for
many different uses; a cultural centre, a large theatre, a conference hall, a
hotel, even a school. Then I asked: what do you want me to make, gracious
interiors featuring nice holes for windows? I accepted the challenge of a banal
commission, helped by the fact that my commissioners did not know exactly what
kind of uses the building had to have, and how each floor had to look. This gave
me the freedom to think of the façade separately from its use. Observing the
refugee camps, and thinking of the history of the Red Cross and its continuous
commitment to war zones, I thought of patching pieces of wall onto the building
frame. The result looks like it has just been bombarded, exactly like the
refugee camp opposite it.
Using different
materials, piled one on top of the other, employed as the local technology
allows, this technique expresses the kind of life that survives in the most
difficult places, like the refugee camp, a challenge to the culture of death.
While we were completing the building, many people asked me if there was
something wrong, didn’t I realise that the walls were twisted? I appreciated
that people were debating the building, and starting from that, they were
discussing of the role of the Red Cross. It was an intriguing idea to create a
building almost like a sculpture in a fragmented landscape, rather like the
culture of the Palestinian diaspora. Scattered around the world, Palestinian
culture lacks unity. However this was the challenge, to create a feeling of
unity out of the fragments, a new cultural approach. Only by observing
contemporary Palestinian reality is it possible to create and contemplate
contemporary Palestinian culture.
Is it possible to define a
Palestinian identity today?
If I observe Jerusalem, I see a city that has shown
hospitality to many cultures, and when I wonder who the Palestinians are, my
answer is that they are the people who have resisted the domination of various
others. So Palestinian culture is the result of many influences. This positive
feature is evident within the city: houses are built next to historical
buildings, a roof leans against an old wall, it’s just like a giant
archaeological site. We find different levels, an identity that reveals itself
as a collage. I like to think of the Palestinian identity as one that
continuously overcomes existing values to find new ones, which expresses the
contradictions of the historical period.
How do documents influence Palestinian
life?
When I went to study abroad, I had a Jordanian
passport and an Israeli travel document. With these papers, I could not travel
outside my own country without lots of forward planning. Once, for example, I
was invited to a seminar in Paris. I went to the French embassy, where they
did not really understand that I had an Israeli document, which had been given
to me by the Israeli authority, but for Palestinians: otherwise, I would have
obtained my visa in half an hour. Once they discovered I was Palestinian, they
told me I should have requested the visa six months in advance. All Palestinians
feel somehow that nothing is normal for them. Even moving around or simply
living in our own world is far from normal for us Palestinians. You are always a
Palestinian - someone who is odd. Our wish for normality expresses itself in our
longing for a passport that actually recognises our civil rights. We’d like to
get the same treatment as everyone else at an airport, and not always this
special treatment.
Can you tell us more about the
special treatment of Palestinians in Jerusalem?
Palestinians who live in
Jerusalem cannot live abroad for longer than
three years, or they lose their right to live in Jerusalem. Their identity card would be
withdrawn. It’s pure folly. Isn’t this my hometown after all? Where can I go if
I can’t come back to my own town? The Palestinians are always out of place, even
in their own land. I always tell my Israeli friends that they shouldn’t be
surprised that Palestinians live in illegality – for us, it’s the only way to
survive. My job, for example, requires me to supervise the building sites in
Ramallah and Bethlehem. That means I have to cross many
checkpoints, and if these are closed, I am forced to cross the borders
illegally, in order to go on working and living.
The Israeli Occupation finds its clearest
expression in the transformations of the territory, and the city of Jerusalem is the epicentre
of such transformations. Since the Occupation started in 1967, there’s been
progressive colonialisation, with Israeli settlements strategically placed on
the hills. All the planning policies have been in favour of the Israeli
occupiers. So, alongside well-linked settlements with high-tech services, Arab
villages survive, absolutely overlooked, with no services from the council. In
Berlin, there has been such a wave of
enthusiasm, and investments everywhere after reunification, whereas reunified
Jerusalem has
not only kept its forms of separation, but is building new, crueller ones. It is
enough to look at the physical space to realise this. The new highways
connecting new settlements have been used to separate the Palestinian zones one
from another. So, along the highway that follows the path of the 1967 wall, it
is clear how, even if the wall is not there anymore, the town is still heavily
segregated.
Jerusalem has been transformed into a collection of Palestinian
ghettos with Christians and Muslims, and Jewish ghettos. The common public
spaces, which should connect different areas of the city to service all the
citizens, are instead used as ghetto-ising tools. In the Palestinian part of the
city, the only public services built by the municipality are the police
headquarters and the prison. The public institutions in the Palestinian sector
serve as intimidation, they are there as threats. Even more extreme is what is
happening in Ramallah and Bethlehem, where space development is only
vertical because the Israeli authorities prevent any natural expansion, while
Jewish settlements continue to occupy the land. So on one side, there are people
who are forced to live in dense clusters, and on the other side, a far smaller
number of people occupying a much wider area of land. These are places of
apartheid. Investments are only available for the Jews, with special terms to
build public houses at low prices, whereas building sites are forbidden for the
Palestinians - which forces them to live in ghettos. As a consequence, many
decide to abandon their homeland. Such is the Israeli strategy for ‘solving’ the
Palestinian issue.
The Occupation is the largest problem at any
level, from social to urban, from economic to judicial. I think some separation
is needed, to restore equality and respect, but not separation as segregation in
boxes, and a slow suffocation of the people inside the boxes. The end of the
Occupation is the most important thing to create life and development. While
life is denied by the Occupation, people feel oppressed and this fosters
turmoil. We don’t need to talk about whether violence is justified or not, of
course no violence is justified; but violence is inevitable until we can restore
a division founded on equality and respect. Jerusalem should be a town shared by two
states, otherwise ruthless Israeli control and Palestinian ghettos full of
social and economic problems will endure. If the Jerusalem issue is not solved, the Palestinian
issue can’t be solved. Jerusalem is the crucible of the conflict: if
the conflict is not solved in a fair way here, we will retreat from any possible
solution, we will delay it.
Should a
wall separate the future Palestinian state from Israel?
The old city of Jerusalem is special because a wall surrounds
it. Walls are sometimes positive and sometimes negative. There are people who
think that walls are positive, because they make for good neighbours. But I
think it is necessary for walls to have holes in them, a place for the
neighbours to communicate to avoid complete segregation. Walls without holes
become small prisons. Walls are just instruments to shape the space, what is
good or bad is the meaning we give them. In a certain sense, we would need walls
to build a Palestinian state, to find ourselves, to be separated, to be able to
walk on our own, to separately face problems. I do not imagine that the
Palestinian society would be the ideal society, however I was happy when -
during the Oslo
process - an autonomous Palestinian identity was being built. We need to face
our problems on our own, and it’s a process, it’s not possible to be immediately
ready for a new situation. We need elections, and if we are not happy with our
government we need to be able to change it.
Now the checkpoints are walls, walls with a
small hole where there is a soldier, like the tiny window of a prison cell. All
these walls have transformed the West Bank into
a large prison, into a series of cells. Moving in this land, you look forward to
and hope to find a breach in the wall, to overcome it somehow, you hope the door
is not barred. I use walls in my architecture, of course, but I do not know why
they are always twisted, with holes. Maybe it is because I find inspiration in
the demolished and destroyed land. From Jenin to Al-Moqata in Ramallah, wherever
you turn your eyes you find twisted walls, destroyed houses that you cannot
believe are still standing, whole floors suspended over empty spaces, without
walls but still containing a sofa and TV, sights that no engineer would be able
to calculate. I was in shock when I came back to Ramallah after the last raid of
the Israeli army, and I found my building fully in harmony with the demolished
landscape. Thus walls are good if they have many holes. If they serve to set
your limits, you know that is your space; but such walls should surround us
without being dominated by others. This is what the Palestinians mean as the end
of the Occupation, it is a cultural demand. Walls that are too high, without
holes, simply create ghettos of humiliation; they are not good walls.
What is your
dream?
My dream is to be normal - even if, frankly, I
enjoy living in such abnormality. I have to live with the abnormal, so I have to
see it as an adventure rather than complaining about it. I’d love to see many
more architects working with these conditions, able to express their hardships
until the Occupation is finally be over. Anyway, I dream of the day when I am
finally able to plan, to construct urban spaces different from those I shape
today. Meanwhile, I dream of escaping from this condition on the edge of
survival.
Omar Yusef is an architect and lecturer at
the Architecture Department of Birzeit University, West Bank
/DSCN0329_s.jpg)
/DSCN0350_s.jpg)
/1_s.jpg)