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ABSTRACT
One of the most volatile sites in Jerusalem is the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan, at the heart of which lies the City of David archeological site. Much scholarship focuses on the contemporary tensions that arise from its two contradictory identities: an East Jerusalem Palestinian residential community and a Jewish symbol of a mythical past. This article, by contrast, explores a largely overlooked historical moment that has been key to the shaping of these dynamics: the declaration within merely six weeks after the 1967 war of an Israeli national park around the Old City Walls. The article explores how an unrealized British colonial plan for a green belt around the historic walls of Jerusalem was updated in 1967 by Israeli landscape architects using cutting-edge North American environmentalist ideas. Their blueprint, we argue, was crucial to the shaping of the ‘holy basin’s’ spatial logic, landscape imaginaries, and legal structures, necessary to understand the current turn of events. In this process, we highlight the centrality of incorporating longer-term perspectives in the study of contemporary urban realities, bringing into closer dialogue scholarship on present-day urbanism with historical studies of planning and cities.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments, Michael Turner for a long-lasting dialogue, Tamar Novick and Neil Wilkof for reading earlier drafts of this paper, and Cheyn Lambert for her graphic assistance. We also thank Arieh Dvir and Nurit Lissovsky for generously sharing their collections.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Busbridge, “Messianic Time,” 6.
2 Jabareen, “The Politics of State Planning”; Jabareen, “The Right to Space Production”; Wari, “Jerusalem: One Planning System”; Pullan, “The Space of Contested Jerusalem”; Rosen and Charney, “Divided We Rise”; Rokem and Allegra, “Planning in Turbulent Times”; Avni, “Between Exclusionary Nationalism”; Braier, “Zones of Transformation?”
3 Pullan and Gwiazda, “Designing the Biblical Present”; Pullan et al., “David's City”; Noy, “The Political Ends”; Greenberg, “Towards an Inclusive”; Busbridge, “Messianic Time”; Stokes, “Heritage and Sumud.”
4 Other aspects are discussed in Nitzan-Shiftan, Seizing Jerusalem; and Wilkof and Shiftan, “A Historical Opportunity.”
5 Healey and Upton, Crossing Borders; Hein, “The exchange of planning ideas”; Ward, “Re-Examining the International Diffusion”; Ackan, Architecture in Translation.
6 Healey and Upton, Crossing Borders, 41.
7 Nitzan Shiftan, Seizing Jerusalem; Bar and Rubin, “The Jewish Quarter”; Ricca, Reinventing Jerusalem; Kallus, “The Political Role.”
8 Segev, 1967, 419–99.
9 Holzman-Gazit, Land Expropriation, 134, n. 11.
10 Amirav, Jerusalem Syndrome, 35–58.
11 “Minutes,” The Historical Archives of Jerusalem Municipality.
12 This move entailed the eviction of low-income Jewish Israeli citizens. Benvenisti, The Torn City, 139.
13 Kroyanker, Jerusalem - Mamila.
14 Yanai and Yadin to Eshkol, Israeli State Archive [hereafter ISA], GL-3874/5.
15 The five plans were McLean (1918); Geddes (1919); Ashbee-Geddes (1922); Holliday (1930); and Kendal (1944). See also Enis “Urban Open Space.”
16 Home, Of Planting and Planning, 54–60, 149–95; Rabinow, French Modern; Wright, The Politics of Design.
17 Ben-Asher Gitler, “‘Marrying Modern Progress”; Fuchs and Herbert, “Representing Mandatory Palestine.”
18 Kendall, Jerusalem; Ben-Arieh, New Jewish Jerusalem.
19 Ben-Arieh, “Conservation and Planning”; Hysler-Rubin, “Arts & Crafts.”
20 Quoted in Shapira, “Jerusalem's Planning,” 7.
21 Geddes, “Jerusalem Actual and Possible,” 1919, Central Zionist Archives, 59Z4/10.202, 20.
22 Katz, To Stop the Bulldozer, 112–23; Dvir, interview, 2009.
23 Walker and Simo, Invisible Gardens, ch. 1, 4, 9.
24 Barlow Rogers, Landscape Design, 483; Howett, “Ecological Values”; Lystra, “McHarg's Entropy, Halprin's Chance”; Meyer, “The Post-Earth Day Conundrum,” 187–244.
25 E.g. Helphand, Lawrence Halprin; Landscape Journal, 31, special issue.
26 John-Alder, Ian McHarg; Herrington, “The Nature”; Howett, Ecological Values.
27 Brinker, “State Generation,” 143–57.
28 Nitzan-Shiftan, Seizing Jerusalem, 45–78; 156–9.
29 Helphand, “Halprin in Israel.”
30 His professional and pedagogical contribution is currently being uncovered and studied by Prof. Nurit Lissovsky, with whom he has entrusted his papers.
31 Dvir, interview, 2009.
32 McHarg, Design with Nature.
33 Dvir, interview, 2010.
34 Ibid.
35 Katz, To Stop the Bulldozer, 112–23. Prior to taking a position in the NPA, Dvir worked for brief period working at the Israeli Public Works Department (today the National Transport Infrastructure Company).
36 Dvir, interview, 2009.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Dvir, “An Arterial Road,” October 8, 1967, ISA, GL-3837/4.
40 John-Alder, Ian Mcharg, 1.
41 These events are chronicled in Wilkof and Nitzan-Shiftan, “Historical Opportunity.”
42 Dvir, “Planning the National Park.”
43 “A meeting regarding Jerusalem” [Minutes], September 21, 1967, ISA, GL-3847/5.
44 Israel Land Authority, “Ayn-Mem 6.”
45 Dvir, “Planning the National Park,” 54.
46 Dash and Brutzkus, The Jerusalem Conceptual Plan.
47 HaShimshoni et al., 1968 Jerusalem Master Plan.
48 Harif, “An Area,” Ma’ariv.
49 Dvir and the NPA, Jerusalem National Park.
50 The term is taken from Kroyanker, Jerusalem, 176.
51 Dvir and the NPA, Jerusalem National Park, 31.
52 Ibid, 15.
53 The Jerusalem Committee, Proceedings; Nitzan-Shiftan, “Capital City.”
54 Dorman, “Jerusalem's New Park,” New York Times, 38; Feron, “World Panel,” New York Times, 12.
55 The Jerusalem Committee, Proceedings.
56 Feron, “World Panel,” New York Times, 1.
57 E.g. Yanai, “A Proposal,” ISA, GL-3834/10.
58 E.g. Benvenisti, The Torn City, 288–307.
59 Weil and Danin to Israel Land Authority, ISA, GL-3834/7; Yanai to Kamir, ISA, GL-3834/8.
60 E.g. Weil and Danin to Israel Land Authority.
61 Jerusalem Post Reporter, “Franciscans’ Land.”
62 Hirschfeld, “Between Symbols and Stones,” 167.
63 Katz, To Stop the Bulldozer, 112–23.
64 E.M. Tross, “Jerusalem East-Israel Town Plan”; East Jerusalem Development Ltd, https://www.pami.co.il/he/ (accessed October 15, 2021); Itzik Ya’acobi, interview, 2009.
65 Zandberg, Critical Analysis of Urban Conservation; Itzik Ya'acobi, the first CEO of PAMi, recalls how his team convinced the residents of Sham'a to relocate, offering them ‘meager compensation.’ Ya'acobi, interview, 2009.
66 E.g. The Jerusalem Committee, 29–31.
67 Dvir, interview, 2009.
68 Dvir and the NPA, National Park, 24; Nitzan-Shiftan and Hasson, “The Jerusalemite Irreversibility Laboratory.”
69 Eyal, The Disenchantment of the Orient, ch. 5.
70 Dvir and the NPA, Jerusalem National Park, 26.
71 Dvir, interview, 2009.
72 Dvir and the NPA, Jerusalem National Park, 33.
73 Ibid, 27, 33.
74 Dvir, interviews 2009; 2010.
75 Dvir, interview, 2009.
76 Jabareen, “The Politics of State Planning.”
77 Nitzan-Shiftan, “On the Relentless.”
78 Pullan and Gwiazda, “City of David,” 29.
79 City of David, “Tour.”
80 The National Parks and Nature Reserves Law.
81 Pullan et al., “David's City,” esp. 80–81.
82 Eisenbud, “Final Deliberations”; Nitzan-Shiftan, “On the Relentless.”
83 Kimmelman, “Cable Cars over Jerusalem?”
84 Emek Shaveh, “Biannual Summary;” Hasson and Friedson, “El-Ad Is Taking over Another Target.”
85 Peace Now, “Expansion of the National Park.”
86 Pullan and Gwiazda, “Designing the Biblical Present,” 107.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Shira Wilkof
Shira Wilkof is an urban historian, and the Jacques Lewiner Career Advancement Chair at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Haifa. She specializes in transnational history of town planning knowledge; environmentalism and sustainability in design thought; and Palestine/Israel spatial production.
Alona Nitzan Shiftan
Alona Nitzan-Shiftan is a professor of architectural history and theory at the Technion, where she heads the Arenson Built Heritage Research Center. Her work on the politics of architecture and heritage, inter and postwar architectural modernism, and critical historiography has been sponsored by CASVA, Getty/UCLA, and the universities of Michigan and Chicago. She served as the president of the European Architectural History Network, and advanced design research as the first Chair of Architecture at the Technion. Her award-winning book Seizing Jerusalem: The Architectures of Unilateral Unification was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2017. She is currently working on the Israel volume of the Modern Architectures in History series by Reaktion Books.