Safdie’s involvement in E. Jerusalem planning and construction

By Abe Hayeem (RIBA)

The response to the correspondence in your paper, <http://www.ft.lk/article/599552/Israel-architect-Moshe-Safdie-responds-to--Sri-Lankan-Journalists-for-Global-Justice> that has been brought to my attention, as author of the article in the Guardian that so incensed Safdie, echoes several occasions when his involvement in planning and building in the occupied territories was raised, not least when he slammed as ‘hypocrites’, eminent architects in the UK including the RIBA then-President, who had backed an advertisement in the London Times, asking Israeli architects to desist from such projects, against international law. (http://www.bdonline.co.uk/israel-row-safdie-slams-‘hypocrites’/3088795.article) 

Safdie was also prominent in censuring the Royal Institute of British Architects who in March 2014, passed a Council Resolution to ask the UIA (International Union of Architects) to suspend the Israeli Association of United Architects for its unethical building of settlements that breached the UIA Resolutions condemning such actions. As a result of this pressure, and from the IAUA, the move was sadly scuppered, even though Desmond Tutu sent his support to the move at the UIA General Assembly in Durban, while Gaza was being bombed to smithereens by the Israelis.

I maintain that my article in the Guardian, was not erroneous. Moshe Safdie is being disingenuous when he says he was not involved with planning and development in Silwan which is in occupied East Jerusalem. Any Israeli development there is as illegal under international law as anywhere else in the occupied West Bank. As a result of Israel’s aggressive Judaisation policies immediately after the 1967 war, UN Security Council Resolution 252 on Jerusalem deplored the failure of Israel to comply with the General Assembly resolutions against such actions and considered that “all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, including expropriation of land and properties thereon, which tend to change the legal status of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that status.” 

Safdie’s refusal to accept he was involved in ‘Silwan’ is because he is trying to maintain that the area of the City of David in his plan for Elad, is not in Silwan but in the area called ‘Wadi Hilweh’, and in the eastern area, called ‘Al-Bustan’, where ‘David’s Garden’ is planned, also involving the illegal planned demolition of 89 Palestinian homes, originally part of Plan 11155, displacing over 1000 Palestinians. But both of these areas are definitely considered as part of Silwan and both involve the settler organisation Elad. As the Ir-Amim (a non-political NGO committed to a just Jerusalem for all peoples) report states (1): To Palestinians, the name “Silwan” denotes the area of 2,194 dunams in southeast Jerusalem that is home to 31,000 people, most of whom are Palestinian... The neighborhoods of Wadi Qadoum, Ras al-Amud, Wasat al-Balad, Kharat al-Tank, Bir Ayoub, al-Yaman, Ein al-Louzah, al-Bustan, and Wadi Hilweh are all considered parts of Silwan in terms of the familial and geographic links between their residents.

Safdie indeed does not build in the main West bank, but his intimate involvement in the development and planning in East Jerusalem after 1967 also implicates him in the illegal planning and construction there (under international law and the Geneva Conventions). East Jerusalem was illegally annexed by Israel and Safdie’s work there (apart from his work in West Jerusalem) is also categorised as working in the OPTs.

Israel assumed it was reclaiming the Jewish Quarter which was expanded to five times its original size pre 1948, where Safdie now has his house –built on the ruins of a destroyed Arab structure, yet homes in West Jerusalem which were looted and occupied by Israelis in the 1948 war have not been returned to their rightful owners, also made impossible by the insidious Absentee Properties law, where Palestinians were turned into non-persons, branded as “Present Absentees”. 

Safdie was closely connected in the renovation and work to the Old City, and in 2009 in Plan 11155 for neighbourhoods in Silwan, commissioned by the extreme settler organisation called Elad, which occupied Palestinian homes by turning out the families, under the Absentee Properties law. 

In late 1997, a year after Binyamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister for the first time, the government transferred control over the entire ‘City of David Park’, and the excavations beneath it, to Elad. This includes what it calls the ‘City of David’ regularised by Plan 11155, where vast excavations and tunnelling are being carried out, undermining Palestinian homes and a kindergarten, while destroying evidence of any Islamic or other civilisations other than ‘biblical’ ones, to claim Jewish hegemony. 

There was no protest from the Israeli architects, including Safdie, when the centuries old Mughrabi Quarter in front of the Western Wall, where historic mosques and religious buildings were bulldozed after the 6 day war, including disabled people in their homes who could not get out in time-–an archaeological crime against the Hague Conventions. Safdie participated in projects to landscape the cleared area in front of the Western Wall, and building the Ben Porat Yeshiva alongside. 

All these areas involve the illegal demolition of Palestinian homes or the taking over the property by the ‘Custodian of Empty Properties’ by the Jewish National Fund, and the imposition of settlers into Palestinian homes –the intention is to remove as many Palestinians from the area as possible. The Jerusalem Outline Plan 2000, which creates a ‘greater Jerusalem’ and claimed by PM Netanyahu as Israel’s undivided city, which involved encompassing 28 Palestinian villages and envisages moulding the demographics from an majority Arab population to a 70-30 Jewish to Arab ratio, a decidedly racist planning policy. Presently, a huge visitors’ centre (Kedem Centre) for the City of David is being built on what was known as the Givati parking lot, which is also being drastically excavated, damaging all evidence that is not biblical, and destroying ancient human remains. Safdie says he has regularised Palestinian homes in Wadi Hilweh, and also the homes held by Elad. 

BIMKOM, the Israeli NGO that fights Israel’s illegal plans, says: “The residents of Silwan Center are caught between a rock and a hard place, because all new plans for the neighbourhood link the legalisation of Palestinian homes to the formalisation and expansion of Israeli settlement in the area,” as Safdie’s plan does. 

“The as-yet unapproved Jerusalem 2000 Outline Plan was a missed opportunity to grant planning formalisation to Silwan, where dozens of houses have been built spontaneously over the years. The outline plan did not propose any additional area that could retroactively legalise existing construction or enable future construction. The plan also included the legalisation of public structures and streets and the allocation of additional areas for these purposes. Although the neighbourhood is home to thousands of Palestinians and only a few dozen Israeli settlers, the Palestinian residents were not included in the planning process as the Jewish settler residents were.” 

Safdie’s plan is now probably superseded by these other projects, but its basic provisions for the sites under construction, and the open spaces and national parks, involving demolition of Palestinian homes remains. To quote from a report by a Palestinian NGO Al-Maqdesi (3): “Israel’s actions in Silwan are unquestionably in contravention of international law. Annexation by the use or threat of force is prohibited under international law, as set forth in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, a principle that was restated in GA Resolution 2625 (XXV) of 1970, which notes that states must not use force to violate existing international boundaries or to solve international disputes, including territorial ones. This was confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its Advisory Opinion Legal consequences (119) of the construction of a wall in Occupied Palestinian Territory, which stated that the status of the OPT, including East Jerusalem, is occupied and the application of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the OPT be enforced. In Al-Bustan, with proposals for a ‘King’s Garden’ adjoining Wadi Hilweh (City of David): The Municipality is following a vicious policy, where they use city planning to achieve military, political, and nationalistic goals. Palestinian communities are fragmented and then isolated through forced dispossession from their houses and land and, in other cases, the use of zoning and planning to restrict growth. A coordinated effort is used to build roads, establish settlements, create parks, and designate archeological sites through Palestinian communities. Once families are forced from their homes there is little space for them to stay in Jerusalem, thereby furthering the Judaisation of the city.”

“To claim that the status of the Palestinian homes in Silwan is illegal is questionable at best and entirely incorrect at worst. Israel cherry picks what it wishes to declare illegal and manufactures a set of circumstances to achieve the desired result. East Jerusalem is occupied territory and as such Israel cannot alter the landscape. The growth of Jerusalem has been anything but natural with the Israeli authorities engaging in all manner of contemptible practices in order to desperately achieve their goal of a Jewish Jerusalem.”(3) Silwan is occupied territory and as such the debate over permits and unplanned extensions is irrelevant as Israel does not possess sovereignty over the area. Palestinian construction is not some political act of defiance (like the West Bank illegal outposts) but a case of human need. In addition, if the planned demolitions in Al-Bustan go ahead there are solid grounds that that this will constitute a war crime and a crime of persecution against humanity. The discrimination and racism on display in Silwan will lead to a new Hebron if something is not done soon to halt these actions.”(3)

“At the core of this conflict lies the Palestinian village of Silwan and the speed at which national and international attention has found itself on the doorstep of Silwan is testament to the crisis that is unfolding there. It is possible to look on Silwan as a decisive piece of the Jerusalem puzzle. Victory in Silwan will perhaps be key to future control of East Jerusalem, and consolidating Elad’s control of the ‘City of David’ and ‘the King’s Garden’ will separate Jerusalem from the Palestinian’s West Bank hinterland, also making a two state solution impossible.”(3)

Yonathan Mizrachi, from the organisation Emek Shaveh http://alt-arch.org/en/ also notes that “if you go to Silwan and you believe that Israeli history is present, and this history started there, it is very easy for you to believe that the land should remain in Israeli hands in any final solution. “By handing over the management of the site of ancient Jerusalem to a private group (Elad) with an extreme political agenda, the state has set in motion a process that has both potentially dangerous political consequences and undermines archaeology as an independent field of research. You cannot excavate the entire area and archaeological finds do not entitle any particular religion to take over land today. If this was the case the world would descend into geographical chaos.” UNESCO has many times expressed its concern over Israel’s altering Jerusalem’s historic status http://www.jta.org/2015/07/09/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/unesco-slams-israeli-activity-in-jerusalems-old-city

“Almost every action currently being taken in Silwan is in contravention of some international law or convention Israel is a party to. Refusing building permits to Palestinians in dire need of expanding their homes, while simultaneously transferring settlers with preferential treatment is the epitome of racial segregation and apartheid. There is no solid archaeological proof that King David’s palace lays beneath Silwan. Using this as legitimisation to violate international law and demolish people’s houses is a shockingly disingenuous abuse of people’s faith.”(3) 

Yes, Safdie does support a ‘two state solution’, which is now defunct anyway, and says he has supported ‘Bimkom’, a planning NGO that helps Palestinians resist Israel plans to evict them, but he has been intimately involved with the plans and building in east Jerusalem and the Old City consolidating Israel’s hold on ‘an undivided city’ which negates it is a joint capital with the Palestinians, and thus negates the idea of a just two state solution. Incidentally, Safdie’s Mamilla project, built on ‘no man’s land’ requisitioned illegally by Israel after 1967, resulted in the demolition of the Mamilla quarter which was a densely inhabited mixed quarter, which now contains luxury Jewish-only homes and a lavish Mall which is used mainly by Jewish Israelis and where Palestinians have experienced terrible racism by rightwing Israeli hoodlums.

Safdie is a brilliant architect from his youth with Habitat from Expo 1968 and is well established internationally with huge luxury projects, public buildings and museums in Israel and around the world –and has his base in Boston, Massachusetts. He says he supports NGOs that work to coexistence and cohabiting of Palestinians and Israelis, and preserving Palestinian villages, but the dispossession, house demolitions and violence experienced by Palestinians have continued relentlessly, and Safdie’s eminent influence does not seem to have been used to actually change the dire situation.

(The writer is Chair, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine.)

References:

1. Shady Dealings in Silwan - Ir-Amim report May 2009 http://www.ir-amim.org.il/sites/default/files/Silwanreporteng.pdf 

2. Separate and Unequal: Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. <https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iopt1210webwcover_0.pdf>

3. The Judaisation of East Jerusalem, Oct 2010 by Al Maqdese for Society Development, http://www.al-maqdese.org/AR/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/demoltion-silwan_English_ayman-final.pdf