Saving Lifta

http://www.saving-memory.blogspot.com/

Between 19th - 26th October 2008, FAST engaged in various appointments with figureheads and organizations in the Palestine/Israel region to initiate the next phase of Saving Lifta project-campaign.

The discussions held included a meeting with figureheads of the Lifta Committee (Hassan A.Shalbak, Ali Hamoudeh, Rabie H. Rabie, Abed Abu-Liel, Husni Salah) and their representative Yacoub Odeh in Ramallah; a meeting with Eitan Bronstein, Director of Zochrot (Remembering) in Tel Aviv; as well as various meetings in Jerusalem - including a trip to Lifta - with 2nd & 3rd generation Lifta activists (Anan Odeh - Human Rights Lawyer, Sihan Rashid, Lena Meari - Anthropologist, Thair Odeh, and Zacharia Odeh - Executive Director of the Civic Coalition for Jerusalem.)

FAST addressed to the Lifta Committee a history of the work undertaken so far in the project-campaign. We discussed the conference that we held on Lifta in Amsterdam 2006, and the international campaigning, such as the proposal of a project to UNESCO World Heritage as well as the application on the World Monument Fund's list for 100 most endangered places. And concluded with our appraisal on Lifta's significance and how she inspired FAST to set about an initiative for regional activism.

FAST agendas not only serve to expose violations in architecture and planning, our aim is to create architectural responses that empower marginalised, segregated and displaced groups, communities and people. To show what has the potential to be possible, whilst considering the human component as the most fundamental criteria.
In Lifta's case, to set about a campaign against the Approved Redevelopment Plan(s) that erase all memory of Lifta, FAST are leading a project to advocate the recognition of Lifta through the creation of alternative plans and an alternative master-plan.

Lifta should be reserved as a special place of conscience, for truth and justice, regarding issues at the very heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is a place that bears testimony to the memory of the national catastrophe of the Palestinian people - al Nakba. And a place that can serve as a potential testing-ground for General Assembly Resolution 194; Israel’s obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law to allow and facilitate the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes. If Lifta was attentively planned, in re-instatement of her recognition and her possibilities as a place, she could play a significant role in the event of a concilatory process and changes needed for peace.

The Saving Lifta project-campaign aim is towards a common vision, for a 'space of reconciliation', using alternative plans and a master-plan that can be articulated and lobbied using both Palestinian & Israeli civil society. The objective is to create regional movement, action and a voice that can monoeuvre the campaign to effect and reposition the Jerusalem Municipality Authority's tops-down prospects on Lifta; anticipating that the project-campaign will be lobbied through the Israeli judicial administration and not under-estimating the possibilty of lobbying as far as the Knesset Parliament.

The next step will see FAST setting out a detailed brief proposing the agendas of the project. The brief will be issued at the beginning of January 2009 (and will also form the format of the forthcoming website - www.savinglifta.org) to potential participants of the project. Between now and January, working with our partners Yacoub Odeh - a Lifta refugee and Eitan Bronstein - Zochrot, with support from our team of regional Lifta activists, we will reach out to regional organizations, education/research faculties and potential sponsors that can play a key role in this project through their participation (such as building conservationists, legal advocates in environment & planning, civil building and peace activists, and local architecture schools.)

In a period of a week in February 2009 a series of meetings will be arranged to be held in Jerusalem and the region. FAST will present the project agendas and invite potential regional participants to discuss the proposition in context to creative opportunities and their own agendas. We hope (in that week) to resolve forming a two year plan (2009 and throughout 2010) involving a dynamic coalition of participants and supporters, reaching across the divides between Israeli and Palestinian, and making Saving Lifta an eventful yet decisive example of an effort that transcends expectations of the possible.

Please lookout for the project-campaign website - www.savinglifta.org in January.

Please feel welcome to join our new Facebook Group - Saving Lifta - for the project-campaign; also allowing you to recieve instant announcements on news & events. To find the group, click on 'Group' from your Facebook Account home page (if you don't have an account its simple to create one from www.facebook.com), then type - Saving Lifta - in the Group Search and hopefully Saving Lifta group will appear.

Anil Korotane, FAST Posted by FAST  7 November 2008

ZOCHROT CONFERENCE - RETURN OF THE REFUGEES

Practices, Strategies, and Visions" at the Zionist Organization of American House in Tel Aviv.

22-24 July 2008

The large attendance at the conference – about 300 people – surprised even the organizers since the conference was not publicized in any major media outlets. On the morning of the conference certain influential American Zionists put strong pressure on the ZOA House to cancel the conference. The size of the audience proved that there are more people in this country who are interested in thinking about the return of Palestinian refugees and who understand that without their return the conflict will never end than is generally perceived.

At the conference Israelis and Palestinians presented new ideas for the return of the refugees and for understanding the meaning of such a return for life in this country. Here is a link to Eitan Bronstein's opening remarks and a link to the text "Preliminary Ideas on the Return of Refugees" presented by Norma Musih.

Here is a report of the Conference:

Tel Aviv conference organizes around the right of return

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9686.shtml
Nora Barrows-Friedman, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2008
 

All of the conference texts will be posted on the website soon.
Zochrot will continue to develop ideas for the possible return of Palestinian refugees and invites the public to take part in this process.

On Sunday, June 22, 2008, the art exhibit "Architecture of Destruction, Fear, and Subordination" opened at the Art Gallery at Zochrot, curated by Ariella Azoulay. About 100 people attended the exhibit opening.

Sedek 3, on the topic of the return of the refugees, is now in print and can be purchased at Zochrot (50 NIS). It will also soon be available for purchase through the website of Pardes Publishers www.pardes.co.il.

Also in print is the book by Noga Kadman, "On the Sides of the Road, on the Margins of Consciousness," (Hebrew) on the marginalization of the Palestinian villages destroyed in the Nakba from Israeli discourse. It can be purchased at Zochrot (70 NIS) (link to more info on the book on the website).

On Wednesday, June 24, 2008, there was a half-day tour to al-Shaykh Muwannis (northern Tel Aviv) led by Majdulin Beidas, a refugee from the village. Twenty-five people took park. At the end of the tour we visited the cemetery of the village, near the grounds of the General Security Services. The tour had been coordinated in advance with the police, including a joint visit to the cemetery, but despite this the GSS security guards stopped the tour and demanded that participants leave the area. Link to Benny Ziffer's blog (Hebrew)

LIFTA CONFERENCE – at “de Balie” AMSTERDAM – May 14 2006

APJP members participated in this conference held by the “Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory” (FAST) is to raise as much awareness as possible, first to the Nakba (1948) and second to its continuation (2006).

The remains/ heritage of Lifta, a ruined Palestinian village are going to be destroyed soon, because of the implementation of a new Israeli masterplan on top of the village.

All the area will be transformed itself into yet another Jewish neighbourhood (with a biblical narrative), as we’ve already seen happening in other places around the country.

In order to freeze the masterplan and in order to show that the Nakba and the destruction of the Palestinian rich cultural heritage is still going on, we are organizing the event at the Balie.

Renovation projects can be as symbolic as the destruction that necessitates them.

Construction can be used to reinforce a violent sundering of the built environment and to weave the fabric of a former life back together. (Robert Bevan – The Destruction of Memory)

The FAST conference will form an inquiry into the ways renovation projects are being appropriated by official institutions in order to promote ideological and political agendas.

Some torn threads of antiquity include the destruction of Muslim history, and of religious monuments and buildings in Bosnia ; to the reconstruction of the Jewish past and memory in post-war Europe ; to the destruction and distortion of Palestinian past after the creation of the State of Israel.

A poignant example of this eradication of local memory is the village of Lifta , which lies just outside Jerusalem ; the community has been abandoned since the Israeli army drove out the last of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948. Today Lifta is more or less a ghost town. While the former villagers live mainly in East Jerusalem and Ramallah. Now, however, a renovation project aims to turn Lifta into an expensive and exclusive Jewish residential area – erasing its history in the process.

Is the transformation process of buildings and physical structures, from people living environments, into cultural symbol and national threats can be reversible?

During the conference the case of Lifta will be presented, analyzed and put into the perspective of other international planning and architecture projects.

Participants:

Malkit Shoshan, an Israeli architect, the director of FAST, the Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory .

Eitan Bronstein, The director of Zochrot, investigating the Israeli landscape in relation to the destruction of Palestinian villages.

Shmulik Groag, Architect and Planner-Msc student in LSE Dealing with Conservation and memory regarding the lost Palestinian built heritage in Israel .

Zvi Efrat, the dean of the architecture faculty at Bezalel academy, Jerusalem

Khaldun Bshara, Palestinian architect, representative of Riwak, a center for planning and renovation in Ramallah.

Jakoub Odeh, a refugee from Lifta

Ciraj Rassool, Trustee of the District 6 Museum, Cape Town

Moderator: Lucas Verweij, the dean of the academy for architecture and urban design in Rotterdam .

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