To Start a City from Scratch: New Israeli Towns in the Occupied Territories

Thomas Leitersdorf heads a leading architectural and town-planning practice in Tel-Aviv. He was educated at the Architectural Association in London and began his career working with Bill Perera in the United States on town planning projects in Orlando, Florida and in the Ivory-Coast, where he planned the expansion of the capital Abidjan. Leitersdorf returned to Israel in the 1970s, and has since become one of the most influential architects, whose projects within and beyond the green-line have been widely acclaimed.

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Separation seems to have spread everywhere

There is no good fence. The decision to build the separation fence and the walls is always made by those with the power and the means. Those on the other side are always the weak. It is also no coincidence that on one side of the huge bank of earth separating Caesarea from Jisr al-Zarka, it is pastoral and green (the Caesarea side) and it is barren on its other, intimidating, side. This separation is physical, with an ethnic, national or class basis; the separation between Jews and Arabs, between Middle Eastern and European, between the rich and the poor, this is the main logic that currently organizes Israeli expanses. It also does not stop at the separation fence in the West Bank, but finds its way into the very heart of Israel proper. These profound and uncompromising claims are the focus of the "Hafrada" ("Separation") exhibition, which opens today in the gallery of the Architects Association in Jaffa.

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