Stepping down off the fence

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/707114.html

18/04/2006

Stepping down off the fence (an about turn by the architect of Maale Adumim)

By Esther Zandberg

Even after 20-something years, and despite everything she knows today, architect Elinoar Barzacchi was gripped with excitement last week when she recalled her part in the establishment of the West Bank settlement Ma'aleh Adumim. "I'm the mother of Ma'aleh Adumim. I loved it like I've never loved anything in my life. As an architect, as a planner, I had the feeling that this is almost like building a utopia on earth, building the right thing, the worthy and the beautiful. I think that planning a city is the nearest thing to giving birth to a child. There isn't any other creative experience like it."

Just before the day the bulldozers came in, she says, "I took my shabby little Volkswagen, which barely managed the climb, and I went there at night by myself. The hills were bald and empty. Here they didn't tell Mohammed, 'Get up. Go.' I knew the place better than my own home. I sat on the hillside and cried. I cried for every reason in the world. I cried for the hills that would disappear and I cried for joy over the new city that would be built."

Barzacchi was responsible for the establishment of Ma'aleh Adumim (which was planned in actuality by architect Tommy Leitersdorf) in the early 1980s in her capacity as the chief architect for the Jerusalem District at the Construction and Housing Ministry. In her next senior position, as city engineer of Jerusalem in the early 1990s, she was partner to the planning of the "second wave" of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and the preparation of the master plan for Palestinian locales in East Jerusalem .

Barzacchi's senior position today is non other than chair of the board of Ir Amim ("City of Nations"), a nongovernmental organization that deals with Jerusalem from the perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, acts to protect the rights of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, fights the route of the separation fence (although not the fact of its construction), provides legal defense to Palestinians who have been harmed by the building of the fence and acts against the creation of facts on the ground that would thwart negotiations on the future of Jerusalem .

Barzacchi's involvement in Ir Amim is without a doubt a personal and professional reversal, in light of her previous record of work in the service of the planning establishment in Jerusalem - which created and is still creating facts on the ground that thwart negotiations on the city's future and is causing infringements of the rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and implementing a policy of occupation and annexation, land confiscation, discrimination and expulsion. The "empty" hills of Ma'aleh Adumim were not empty and "Mohammed" was indeed told to get up and go, like all the members of the Jahalin tribe that is now forced to live in the area of the Abu Dis garbage dump, as journalist Gideon Levy recently wrote.

'A doer, not a talker'

The activity of Ir Amim is manifested in, among other things, tours it conducts along the " Jerusalem envelope" - the "laundered name" of the horrible separation wall that shreds Jerusalem - with the aim of exposing to the public "the complexity of East Jerusalem ," as she defines it, the daily injustice that it causes to the Palestinian population and its long-term implications. To a large extent, the fence is also an expression of a long-standing planning policy in Jerusalem to which Barzacchi herself was partner and the results of which she is now seeing.

Barzacchi has been serving on the board of Ir Amim as a volunteer for three years. Until now, she has remained behind the scenes, whether because, as she says, she is "a doer, not a talker" or because she has always observed a strict separation between her purely "professional" work and her political identification - a separation that has given rise to indifference and blindness to what is happening beyond one's nose among the vast majority of the community of architects and planners in Israel. Barzacchi herself has never spoken out in public against what is being done and she has never protested or warned. "I didn't think my voice would be heard," she explains, "and in personal circles they know where my heart is."

Now Barzacchi has agreed to deviate from her custom and accede to the request from Ir Amim that she go public. The NGO has decided to "come out of the closet," as Barzacchi defines it, and to direct its activities not only at politicians, delegations from abroad or the already convinced, but also to the general Israeli public from all parts of the political spectrum. Among their new target audiences are also members of the architecture and planning community. Barzacchi is without a doubt the most suitable figure to represent the picture to them properly.

She is very familiar with the subject, inside and out, an esteemed figure in the community and she speaks its professional language. The step she has taken can transmit a message to many. At the end of the month Barzacchi will conduct the first organized tour of the " Jerusalem envelope" for members of the Israel Planners Association, of which she has been a member for many years. The route will start at the Gilo neighborhood and Har Homa, move on to places like Tsur Baher and Abu Dis and culminate at the Qalandiyah roadblock.

However, in the notice the association sent out to its members in advance of the tour, it was explicitly stressed that "we have been promised the tour will be of a professional-planning nature and there will be no political/party statements." This absurd promise of no politics in the most political place to a large extent blunts the supposed exit from the closet and leaves Barzacchi, after all, on the fence. Barzacchi explains that "Ir Amim has no political identity."

Kernel of the conflict

Barzacchi was born in Haifa in 1941 and attended the Reali High School there. She began her study of architecture at the Technion in Haifa and continued in Geneva and Paris . The year she studied architecture at the Technion "was the worst year in my life," she says. When she served as head of the architecture school at Tel Aviv University in the 1990s, she acted to change the picture. Today she continues to teach there.

In 1977 Barzacchi returned to Israel from a long period of study and work in Europe . The architect of the Construction and Housing Ministry at the time, Ram Karmi, took her in to the ministry and appointed her to the position of district architect. Since then she has lived in Jerusalem and held a series of key positions in the planning system. In her appearance and manner she radiates a quiet, distant elegance that is not "Israeli." She phrases her remarks diplomatically and cautiously, using decisive language only rarely. Even after 30 years in Jerusalem , she views "Jerusalem-ness" from a certain distance.

"Because I'm not originally a Jerusalemite, I don't have that awe of the sacrosanct," she says, "and I can look at this city with a normal eye or even a sense of humor."

Of all the possible places in Jerusalem , Barzacchi, who is secular, modernist by her own definition and dovish by her own declaration, lives in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City .

On the way to her handsome home in the Quarter we pass by key stations at the kernel of the national and religious conflict and past the oppressive stone architecture of "the rock of our existence" as it was fantasized by the rehabilitators of the Quarter after the occupation in 1967. From the veranda of her home there is a view of the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall. This is a place where one needs a lot more than a sense of humor to live.

How does one end up living in a place like this?

Barzacchi: "Because I'm an architect. One hundred percent because of that. I came from Europe and I thought the most wonderful place to live in Jerusalem is in the Old City . In Rome I lived in the Old City . In Paris I lived in Montmartre . Here in the Quarter it looked to me like the most Jerusalemite thing there is, the most authentic, the most multicultural it can be."

Have you been disillusioned since then?

"Look, I know everybody here. I've eaten with the Arabs and I've bought at their shops and in the intifada, when they closed down the shops, they would call to me from behind the door. I have seen hatred and fear more among the Jews than among the Arabs. I feel more alien among the Jews who live here now than among the Arabs. The nationalist rather than the religious extremism here is the difficult thing. I see a girl soldier harassing an Arab, or graffiti of 'Death to Arabs' and my stomach turns over."

Isn't that the essence of this place?

"Yes, that's true. I admit that when I first came here I saw only what I wanted to see. There are insights that come much later. Out of naivete and not reading the picture, I used to think that there is an enlightened occupation and that it is beneficial to both sides."

And now?

"I am unambiguously against the occupation. And it is absolutely obvious to me," she says, "that it is the occupation that has brought the inequality in all the aspects of life, including planning and the allocation of resources. I don't feel alien in the Jewish Quarter, because the relations are one-on-one, face to face. But all this does not mean I think it is not necessary to find a different understanding of the life here."

Bringing 'progress'

Barzacchi was appointed municipal engineer of Jerusalem at the end of 1991, toward the end of Teddy Kollek's tenure as mayor. She found a common language with him as two "Europeans" enchanted by the Orient who made it their aim to bring "progress" to the locals. She served in the position for less than three years, and six months after Ehud Olmert was elected mayor she was dismissed from the position. "Our paths diverged," she says, "because we did not see eye-to-eye on the essence of planning. Teddy comes from a European tradition and sees the city as a being of supreme importance the way I do, in the most philosophical sense. Olmert and his deputy, Uri Lupolianski [now Mayor of Jerusalem], made the specific entrepreneurial project their top priority."

In Kollek's day Jerusalem became an urban octopus and his attitude toward the Palestinians was known as arrogant and patronizing. In your opinion, what kind of mayor was he?

"The government was responsible for expanding the borders of Jerusalem and not Teddy, but it is true that he did cooperate. It is true he was patronizing toward the Arabs, but he was patronizing in general. He belongs to the generation of colonialism, if we want to give it a negative connotation, or of enlightenment, if we want a more positive connotation. He would have been very happy if all the Arabs were opera-goers."

And you?

"As a person from Haifa , I've never had a problem with Arabs, not fear and not a feeling that they are different. I am a product of modernity and I thought that planning would solve problems and be beneficial to both the sides."

How to you see the situation now?

"I imagine that like everyone back then, I saw in Jerusalem only what I wanted to see. At that time I thought - and this is one of the far-reaching changes that have happened to me - that Jerusalem really could become a shared city. To my regret, the vision I had then was unrealistic."

What is your vision now?

"In Ir Amim we think Jerusalem has to be the capital of two nations, and it is not possible to end the conflict without an arrangement in Jerusalem . Any agreement has to be reciprocal between the two sides. If they want to put up a separation fence by agreement, that's fine. If they want to, it is possible to divide the city."

Is that a practical possibility?

"If a city is split with a sword, stumps are left. But there are other possibilities: functional division, legal division, a continuous line, broken lines. In the work we did at the Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF), we showed the possibility of seven different forms of division - or, if you like, of sharing, partnership."

The foundation, which is headed by Yossi Beilin, was established in 1990. Its activity is supported by the European Union and it has aroused quite a lot of criticism. In a cooperative effort of Israelis and Palestinians the foundation formulated a master plan for Jerusalem that enables a future agreement. At its center was a redefinition of the question "what Jerusalem is and whom it is for," says Barzacchi, who was a member of the professional team.

At the end of the process, she says, "the Palestinians wanted unification and the Israelis only wanted the Palestinians to disappear from their sight. The Israelis think that without Arabs they will have a higher quality of life."

And what is your opinion?

"In my opinion, this is not at all relevant. Whatever scenario unfolds here, we will be together forever. We have been condemned, for better or worse, to the same air and the same water. It is also impossible to go back to 1967. Both we and the Palestinians are no longer there. But this does not mean there will not be a border and that there will not be a state for each of the peoples."

Urban mistakes

Contrary to the opinion that prevails among planners in Jerusalem , Barzacchi believes the spread of the city and the construction of the encircling neighborhoods - "with no connection to politics" - is not an urban mistake. "If they would have put this entire volume of construction into the center of the city," she said, "it would have died irreversibly."

What are the biggest planning mistakes in Jerusalem ?

"From the planning-political perspective, I think that the mistakes are in the unequal development of the two parts of the city and the localized Jewish settlement in the midst of the Arab neighborhoods. A planning mistake for which there is no atonement is the erection of large complexes like Mount Scopus or Mamilla. This is a plan that leads to wounding, dismantling and alienation, and not to connection, irrespective of relations between Jews and Arabs. And there are architectural errors like the Holyland complex, for example, which is a horrendous thing."

And the Tolerance Museum ?

"This is the ultimate monstrosity. The very fact of this thing, and its erection on a Muslim cemetery - they have to be insane. What are they going to put in there - tolerance in bottles?"

And Ma'aleh Adumim?

"Ma'aleh Adumim already exists. I gave this city everything I could, now it is living its life and its inhabitants love it. It is in the consensus. The protection and defense of it have already been agreed upon in the Geneva accords and other understandings. For me, personally, as for many architects, there is a bridge over the River Kwai syndrome: The moment I plan a project I fall in love with it, even if I have to blow it up afterward."

Ir Amim itself has no position with regard to Ma'aleh Adumim, according to Barzacchi, who throughout the conversation made a point of calling it a city and not by its precise denomination, a settlement. At the same time, the NGO is conducting an intensive information campaign against the separation fence that is planned to enwrap Ma'aleh Adumim and against the construction in the area known as E1, which will prevent Palestinian territorial contiguity in the West Bank and block any path to future talks.

How is it possible to separate things? After all, it is Ma'aleh Adumim that has sown the seeds of the calamity.

"Essentially, had I known then what I know now; had we thought at that time about two states for two peoples, I say Ma'aleh Adumim should not have been established."