The political role of the everyday

Abstract

Through the discussion of housing and its role in the production of the everyday, Rachel Kallus develops the notion of the home as a political arena, exposing the space of everyday life as a battlefield where both national and personal struggles take place. She considers the case of the production of Gilo, a residential quarter built as part of the Israelization process of Jerusalem subsequent to the 1967 war, and its fortification process following the events of the second Palestinian Intifada. These events and the discourse around them are used to examine a process by which the residential environment, the base of everyday life, becomes the guardian of national territory and hence, the center of geopolitical struggle.

Introduction

Gilo, built in the 70’s to the south‐west of Jerusalem, as part of the city’s Israelization following the 1967 war, has been under fire since the beginning of the second wave of the Palestinian Intifada 1 . Initial attempts to make public spaces in Gilo secure, by constructing protective walls around communal buildings and along the streets facing the Palestinian town of Beit Jalla (see Figure 1 ), were followed by protective measures for private dwellings located on the edge of the neighborhood (see Figure 2 ). As part of this process, all windows in each apartment facing Beit Jalla were shielded with bullet‐proof glass to protect the residents from sniper shots. This fortification, its actual construction and the discourse around it, embodies the simultaneous roles of the home as both private and national arena. It indicates how a residential environment, the locus of everyday life, has become the guardian of national territory, and how the political construct of the everyday has penetrated into the private as well as the public.

Figure 1  Decorated defensive wall on Anafa Street, Gilo, 2001 (Photograph by Alex Libek, appeared in Haaretz, March 1, 2001).

Figure 2  A view of Beit Jalla from a living room window of an apartment on Anafa Street, Gilo, 2000 (source: Gilo fortification administration).

The Gilo quarter2, built initially as a putative fortress (Figure 3), has turned into a real one. With walls encircling the neighborhood and bullet‐proof windows framing the scenic views, it is difficult to ignore the contradictions inherent in Gilo. In a recent interview, a Gilo resident told a reporter: “relatives and friends call and ask after our wellbeing, as if we were living in the occupied territories – but, for God’s sake, I am living in Jerusalem”. She further asserted that she “bought an apartment in a Jerusalem neighborhood and not in a remote settlement in the territories” (Cohen, 2000). This exchange, expresses the ambiguity of Gilo’s existence and the uncertainty of its residents’ everyday lives, and also indicates the duality of the home as a personal space and a national domain. It exposes the state’s intense involvement in the everyday, and reiterates enduring traditions of collective identity and territorial definition, suggesting that the concept of the everyday should be re‐evaluated.

Figure 3  A view of Gilo housing (Gilo housing cluster number 11, architect Salo Harshman).

In current debates, the everyday is both an analytical category, and a conceptual instrument. However, in the complexities of a state‐constructed everyday, the role of housing, establishing territory and identity, reveals the everyday as a problematic reality. This paper discusses the notion of the residential environment as a political arena, and the quotidian as a battlefield where both national and personal struggles take place. It briefly considers the notion of the everyday, discusses the nature of housing, and then examines the formal strategies ‐ planning policies and architectural practices ‐ used to construct the everyday. Finally, some of the contradictions inherent in Gilo and its lived experience are discussed, with regard to the socio‐cultural and the spatial implications of a state‐constructed everyday.

The time/space of the everyday

Any consideration of daily news reporting about Jerusalem reveals the manipulation of the everyday in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and its obvious role in the fight over space and territory. In this unsettled terrain of contesting identities and memories, the mundane is yet another battlefield on the meaning of place and the place of meaning (Benvenisti, 1996; Khalidi, 1999; Bollens, 2001). It is part of an on‐going historical process involving interdependent struggles and counter struggles, in which each side holds and fashions its strategies in response to the other (Dixon, 1999; Safier, 2001). In this strife for hegemony over Jerusalem, planning and architecture have been important means for controlling the city and framing its landscape, often affecting the environment with unstable contradictions and unforeseen circumstances (Khalidi, 1999; Kroyanker, 1988). In these competing processes, with each side caught up in its own internal conflicts (Dixon, 1999; Safier, 2001), formal and informal practices are used indiscriminately to gain power and legitimacy.

This dispute over place, space, identity, memory, and especially their physical representation, has often been explained as deriving from conflicting interpretations of time and space (Kemhi, 1998; Kroyanker, 1988). But, when considering Jerusalem’s physical‐spatial development since 1967, the time‐space concept (Massey, 1994; Thrift, 1996) cannot be integrated with the architectural/planning discourse simply as a dispute about Euclidian‐Newtonian versus relativistic dimensions, although this is often done to clarify the distinctions between the traditional city and attempts at its modernization (Madanipour, 1996). Jerusalem’s current situation is obviously affected by world‐wide advanced technological processes, dissemination of information and a global flow of capital and labor (Sassen, 1998; Castells, 2000; Soja, 2000). But, perhaps more than in any other global city (Sassen, 1991), Jerusalem’s urban circumstances are deeply engrained in local socio‐cultural histories. Hence, the dispute over its physical representation of memory and identity is part of an intricate geopolitical situation whereby the urban landscape derives from parallel and multi‐layered conceptions of time‐place.

Two competing time‐space arenas seem to shape the Jerusalem landscape: the mythical and the diachronic3. The mythical arena is defined by narratives emphasizing meta‐historical processes as shaping the symbolic meaning of imagined communities (Anderson, 1983). According to Hazan (1999), Israeli mythical time is defined by the Jewish historical experience, reshaped through the ideologies of the Zionist movement. Palestinian mythical time is defined by the events of the 1948 war and the cataclysm of the Nakba4 (Kimmerling, 1999; Said, 1999). Against these two competing national identities, the experience of the everyday is diachronic and personal. It is shaped through intimate and private quotidian events, related to the cyclical rhythm of the banal and the mundane. However, the mythical and the diachronic arenas are not mutually exclusive since personal and national identities are evidently symbiotic. They are the result of interrelated experiences, defining each other in an indissoluble time‐space continuum of local and national communities, intricately shaping and reshaping each other (Portugali, 1996; Said, 1999; Shafir and Peled, 2000). Jerusalem can thus be seen as an interconnected local and national arena.

Holston and Appadurai (1999) argue that although definitions of modern citizenship have eroded “local hierarchies, statuses, and privileges, in favor of national jurisdictions and contractual relations…place remains fundamental to the problems of membership in society, and cities…are especially privileged sites for considering the current renegotiations of citizenship”. They thus suggest a shift in focus from the nation to the city when considering citizenship identity, pointing out the need to develop an investigative framework that considers cities as a challenge to the nation‐state and its mythical time. Although this does not disregard the salience of the nation‐state, the implication of driving “a deeper wedge between national space and its urban center” suggests the need to revise the consideration of the everyday. In order to shift the focus from major events to history as “written from below”, it is suggested that the intricate ways in which the city is shaped and reshaped can be comprehended through examination of its everyday practices.

Holston’s (1999) notion of insurgent urbanism, suggests reading the city “against the grain of its social formation”. The insurgent approach, in which the city is viewed as a text and context of debates about fundamental social relations, points to the everyday as an opportunity to rethink social practices in planning and architecture. But in order to reveal Jerusalem’s everyday as rooted in the heterogeneity of urban lived experiences, it is suggested that the city also be read against the grain of its national formation, and that spatial practices, setting out the urban space, are mediators between city and citizenship. This focus on the everyday seems to offer strategies that override existing professional approaches, hopefully making it possible to re‐think the city differently.

The professional practice of the everyday

Although fascination with the everyday is long‐standing5, it has only currently been approached as a critical practice that resists modernity, typically referring to political analysis of the consumer society and to the nation‐state as challenged by its subjects. Lefebvre’s theory concerning the relationship between everyday and modernity points out the potential of the everyday “spontaneous conscience” to stand against the oppressions of daily existence (Lefebvre, 1991). De Certeau, ignoring the monotonies and tyrannies of daily life, stressed the individual capacity to manipulate situations and create realms of autonomous action as “networks of anti‐discipline” (De Certeau, 1984).

The everyday as a critical construct has aroused architectural attention, mainly as a reaction within a domain that is increasingly allied with universal globalization6 and represents the attempt to create architectural resistance to commodification and consumption. Confronting, in Lefebvre’s words, “the bureaucracy of controlled consumption”, everyday life has been viewed as a lived experience of a political struggle against the forces of late capitalist economy and their complicity with the market and governmental authority. As pointed out by Harris “the resistance lies in the focus on the quotidian, the repetitive, and the relentlessly ordinary”. The everyday, defined as “that which remains after one has eliminated all specialized activities”, derives its anonymity from its “insignificant quality” (Harris, 1999).

However, it seems as if current architectural interest in the everyday has degenerated mainly into aesthetics, celebrating picturesque qualities and setting its analysis in a rather romantic framework. Progressive avant‐garde consideration of the everyday has not been able to surmount the postmodern search for authenticity, so that the everyday becomes a commodity, often merely a frame for the exotic “other”. Attempts to celebrate “ordinary” “banal” and “less photogenic” environments, in opposition to the postmodern emphasis on monumentality and professional machismo (Mcleod, 1996; Colomina, 1992), have confronted grandiose architecture with domestic situations (Hayden, 1980; Weisman, 1992). But even the claim that everyday interests could confront a modernist utopia7 has seemed to further encourage the promotion of architectural practice as a special and unique orchestration of objects in space.

Recent accounts of the everyday tend to be oblivious to geo‐political circumstances, and are often unaware of the limitation and/or potentials of everyday practices in highly politicized contexts. They have been unable to explain the political construct of the everyday as part of post‐partition8 internal social, economic and political conflicts in non‐western formations of a nation‐state, in which there is a constant struggle not only against old and new forms of western domination, but also against new patterns of local control. The architecture of the everyday and its emphasis on the cultural production of space9, although far from being benign in the west, has even broader implications here. Recent critiques have tackled the connection between politics and architecture in a rather limited way. Though they have had impact on awareness of the political consequences of professional practice, they have neglected to point out the intricate power relations and methodological dissimilarities in which architecture and politics exercise hegemony. Furthermore, they disregard the dangers of any “regime of knowledge”, including that of architectural critique10.

It seems as if the Middle East in particular is in need of a different approach to architecture of the everyday, to generate new possibilities and mobilize a greater awareness of local nuances of power relations and of the internal, complex, and multi‐layered hierarchies of colonization. Examination of the role of the city and of housing in nation‐state building reveals the construction of the everyday, not only as a modernist project, but also as an on‐going national, ideological and political project, with the complicity of professional practice. This demands reassessment of the significance of the everyday and its potential as a space of resistance.

The home and the shaping of national space

Twentieth‐century housing is a public institution operating in tandem with the modern nation‐state. As a physical asset providing residential services necessary for households in modern industrial society, housing can be considered as private goods. However, since society as a whole tends to be affected by its externalities, it is often regarded as public goods. In most countries today housing is among the few remaining public programs, based on government recognition of its responsibilities, mainly to assure citizens of agreed‐upon minimum living standards. Public housing – the provision of planned residential settings by the state – is one of the identifying features of the modern welfare state. It is usually considered as a “public goods” package provided by the state for those who, it is assumed, cannot acquire a place to live on the private market. It often involves one or more of the state’s three main activities: production, subsidy and regulation. Public involvement in housing also stems from government provision of services such as pavements, water supply, sewage, garbage disposal, material and building standards, zoning ordinances, health, fire and safety codes, labor, finance, taxation regulations, and law (van Vliet, 1990). This means that an in‐depth analysis of housing cannot just evaluate the efficiency of the service provided. It must also expose the agendas of government intervention that determine the material, political and social realities of the everyday. Marcuse (1978) has pointed to “the myth of the benevolent State”, showing the role of government interaction with private interests in shaping public policy. Others have also questioned the genuine motivation of governments in deciding how and where people should live (Salins, 1998; Clapham, Kemp and Smith 1990; Bratt, 1986), questioning the very notion of housing as a public policy11.

The role of housing as a primary national strategy is very evident in nation‐state building projects, playing an important role in reinforcing the relationship between a (sometimes imaginary) community, (Anderson, 1983) and a territory12. Thus, in creating the political entity known as the nation‐state, national identity (i.e. citizenship), although intended to override local affiliations, is still very much a place bound concept (Holston and Appadurai, 1999). The modern nation‐state, a sociopolitical construct (Anderson, 2000), relies extensively on architecture, in particular on modern architecture (Bozdogan, 2002), presenting its identity through a variety of formal institutions (Vale, 1992). However, national traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1990; Greenfeld, 1992) are developed not only by means of monumental architecture, but also by means of architecture for the everyday. Balibar (1991) has argued that the nation‐state derives its collective meaning from a “fictive ethnicity” based on family and school, in which the home and the residential environment play the leading roles. Planned neighborhoods are viewed as ideal settings for creating a national community, since they are where struggles over representation, access and entitlement of differently empowered groups take place (Jackson and Penrose, 1993; Bhabha, 1990).

The use of housing for spatially sociopolitical nation‐state building is not unique to Israel. As with other settler societies, such as 19^th century Australia, Canada and the USA, housing has been instrumental in defining and constructing national territories, while giving land benefits to dominant settler groups13. Examples from present‐day Sri Lanka (Little, 1994) and Estonia (Shafir, 1995) also show how housing policies are used by governments to shape territorial boundaries and for constructing citizenship identity of hegemonic ethnic groups around the living space. In Singapore and Hong Kong (Castells, Goh and Kwok, 1990), public housing policies are seen in the context of planned economic development while maintaining the interests of specific hegemonies. These cases have been instrumental in understanding the role of housing policy in local and global economies and its part in forming new societies. Recent examples from Belfast and South Africa also demonstrate the social instrumentality of housing policies, which, in those cases, helped to mediate conflicts and reduce ethnic and racial tensions (Boal, 1996; Bollens, 1998). These examples demonstrate how a basically spatial concept – housing ‐ plays a role in a socio‐economy, how public intervention in housing yields socio‐economic and geo‐political benefits for the nation‐state, and how planning, design, construction and administration of housing become nation‐state mechanisms for regulating the everyday. Since housing can serve to design both space and society, it gives a concrete form to national goals while shaping the image and identity of people. As an efficient and powerful tool, housing allows formal construction of a sense of place by controlling informal quotidian practices, thereby turning the residential system into both a provider of shelter and a roof over one’s head, and a context for redefinition of relationships between the individual and the state. The following discussion attempts to examine how a state‐constructed everyday is manufactured, controlled and managed, and how the nation‐state engages in the production and consumption of the everyday.

State‐constructed everyday: the role of housing in shaping national space

The guiding principles of the housing laid down during Israel’s early years, were based on two national goals – immigrant absorption and population dispersal. Both these goals were emphasized in Ben Gurion’s declaration to Israel’s first government, as was the need for safety and security to be achieved by a “swift and balanced settling of the country”, and the need to absorb and “house all immigrants”. A third private‐interest goal, the provision of satisfactory housing to every household, was again underlined in Ben Gurion’s declaration, referring to the need to “eliminate the chronic problem of over‐density and resultant sickness in slum dwellings” (The Knesset Chronicle, 1949).

It has often been argued14 that the first two national goals were dominant in the formative years of Israel’s housing policy, when the government and other state institutions15 were deeply involved in settlement, development, physical planning and construction. According to this argument the third goal has only emerged since the focus has changed from quantity to quality, and the state has gradually retreated from its involvement in the housing market. However, as the fortification of Gilo demonstrates, although the state’s involvement in the housing market has changed, it is still very much in control, fulfilling national‐interest goals through its housing policies, manipulating populations and territories. As previously discussed, the government’s involvement in housing is manifested not only in the provision of actual dwellings, but also in the provision of related services, as well as in the controlling of development through regulation and standardization. Government involvement has formally and informally controlled the development of residential environments even before the establishment of the state, and is still in effect today. Gilo is not the only example. The construction of about 50 new Jewish settlements in the Galilee in the 70’s and 80’s was instigated by the government and based, as in the 1950’s, on land confiscation and construction jointly with the Jewish Agency16. In strategic areas such as the West Bank, the government has consistently initiated planning and construction17. The Ministry of Housing and Construction is still a major land development agency, financed by the State (Swirski, et al, 2002). The government also controls the mortgage market, thereby maintaining its power of direction and management (Werczberger, 2001; Gavriel, 1985, in Carmon, 1999). Likewise, all planning institutions are centrally administrated and controlled, subordinating all planning decisions to the government (Alexander, Alterman and Law Yone, 1983).

This intense public involvement in the housing market can best be explained in reference to the non‐official goals underlining the state’s activities, and the role of housing in achieving these goals. In the drive to shape its national space, the State of Israel has always been aiming at the territorialization of space, i.e. sovereignty over territory, and its spatialization ‐ the establishment of control and domination over that space. This has often been achieved by giving form to the physical landscape by design and construction of concrete projects, thus providing a framework for establishing sovereignty and hegemony “on the ground”. Location, identity, and power have been established through day‐by‐day mechanisms of confrontation, compromise and consent among economic, social, and political forces. The spatial configuration and organization of housing has played a crucial role in creating a sense of space and establishing the sovereign territory of the nation‐state. Thus, Israel has always had a double agenda as concerns housing: for the outside world, it was intended to establish ownership and control over national territory; whereas internally it facilitated the creation of a living space from which residents were expected to derive their identities and life‐styles, while bestowing symbolic meaning on the daily practices endemic to that space (Kallus and Law Yone, 2002). Here architecture, especially modern architecture has played a major role, as an effective means of interpreting, modifying, and contesting. This is, of course, not unique to Israel18. But the Israeli experience, with its vast and speedy development, enables to review how housing production has continuously shaped and reshaped urban environments, and the unique role of architecture in this process.

Gilo: constructing the everyday

Since the reunification of Jerusalem after the 1967 war, the development of Jewish settlements has become a geo‐political strategy to pre‐empt the future division of the city. This was the basis for the decision to build perimeter neighborhoods around Jerusalem, a planning operation based in the age‐old Zionist ideology that Jewish possession of land is the only way to achieve Israel’s territorial sovereignty. The effort to convey, through physical representation, the message that these neighborhoods are in fact integral to Jerusalem, and not remote settlements in occupied territory, is Gilo’s architectural raison d’etre. Thus, although Gilo is further from Jerusalem than from the neighboring Palestinian town of Beit Jalla, its orientation towards Jerusalem and separation from Beit Jalla was its main architectural goal.

The construction of the new neighborhoods19 around Jerusalem (see Figure 4) was achieved in three major stages. The first step was meant to break the extension of the northern Palestinian built‐up area from the Old City to Ramallah, by creating what was known as the “Northern Lock”, in the form of three new Jewish neighborhoods (Ramat Eshkol, The French Hill, and Givat Hamivtar) extending the Jewish urban sprawl into the Palestinian territory20. The second step was to expand Jewish settlements beyond the Green Line21, and consisted of four new neighborhoods (Ramot, Neva Yaacov, East Talpiot, and Gilo). The third step, intended to increase the Israeli hold of Palestinian territory (Pisgat Zeev), continues, with Har Homa, the latest, still under construction22.

Figure 4  Jerusalem built up area 1997 (source: the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies).

These steps involved major confiscations of land, which have been condemned by the UN Security Council. Confronting strong international pressure, the Israeli government decided to speed up the development process by means of time‐saving planning and construction measures. Regular planning procedures were often skipped over; construction began before approval at all planning levels was finalized, sometimes even before building permits were issued, and pre‐fabricated elements were used in order to speed up the process (Kroyanker, 1988).

Despite these measures, the construction of the new neighborhoods as part of a large‐scale national financial, planning and construction effort has produced residential areas that are in many ways far better than the housing built before the city’s reunification. Instead of the standardized architecture of the 50’s and 60’s, the monotonous building blocks and limited replications of dwelling types, a serious effort has been made to diversify and innovate in the new areas. This was not unique to Jerusalem, but embodied a major shift in public policies to improve housing and make both its quality and location more attractive, based on lessons learnt from failures of earlier schemes. It represented the adaptation of the housing market to changing socio‐cultural and geo‐political conditions, combined with the architectural challenge of mass housing. It can be seen as an attempt to revise the inhumanity of early modernism, to foster a new sense of community and place, to humanize the machine a habiter, to find the lost city, and to address, at least to some extent, issues of personal and cultural identity.

By the end of the 1960’s, the massive construction of large‐scale public housing projects in the urban and the national periphery had almost come to an end. The public housing sector had gradually adopted a variety of spatial strategies for diversifying locations and to develop a wider choice of dwelling for its changing clientele. A large middle class stratum emerged in Israel during the 70’s, and the housing market was eager to serve its needs. The demand for “villas” and “cottages” by the new middle class has produced neighborhoods of detached and semi‐detached housing in all sorts of locations: very close to the inner urban areas, on the urban fringe, in outlying suburban towns or villages, and far out in the mountains of the Galilee and the hills of the newly‐occupied West Bank (Gonen, 1995). Each of these locations represents a spatial preference for low‐density residences, and many of them have been used by the government as a mean to direct residents yearning for a “private house with a garden” to its “high priority areas”23.

Furthermore, until the early 70’s populating strategies were based on allocating designated areas to specific groups such as immigrants, young families, and low income households living in dense conditions. From 1978 this strategy changed and attempts were made to create better social integration by combining strong households with weaker ones. This requires a large variety of dwelling types, organized in different spatial combinations. It also demands more inventive and less routine architecture to respond to the changing needs. These housing strategies, and their design implications, corresponded to, and were informed by, the break from modernism in architecture worldwide and the growing call for more human environments, and the return to the lost city24. In this sense, the housing schemes of the 70’s and 80’s, express two competing trends. On the one hand they demonstrate a yearning for suburban low‐density living, but at the same time they inculcate the Israeli version of postmodern new‐urbanism25. Planned residential developments catering for middle class home‐improvers attempt to recreate the urban environments absent from the massive modernist housing estates of the 50’s and early 60’s, thereby fostering a sense of place. This “return to the city” was clearly declared by the Ministry of Housing and Construction, and was presented not only in its various manifestos and research publications (Carmi, 1977; Wallfson, 1976; Paldi and Wallfson, 1989) but also in the range of projects built and constructed during the 1970’s and 1980’s26.

Following these developments, Gilo, built in the late 70’s, was organized into four sub‐areas of about 300 dwelling units, serving also as sub‐social units, each with a population of about 1,000‐1,200 residents (see Figure 5). The assumption that these sub‐units could support community services was not new to town planning. However, the way in which this social framework became a base for developing an architectonic “spine” connecting well‐defined pedestrian walkways and squares with transportation and the public services infrastructure is worth noting (see Figure 6). The social attributes were further translated into sophisticated formal categories, creating an intricate interplay between built and open spaces. Essentially, the aim was to contextualize a Mediterranean setting architecturally27 by referring to courtyard building typologies and urban patterns of alleys and small squares, making Gilo a catalogue of 70’s and 80’s perimeter blocks styled after the urbanscape of Old Jerusalem. This politicized nostalgia for the vernacular of the colonized (Nitzan‐Shiftan, 2002) is expressed through architectural authentication that comprises formal stone construction in the use of arches, gates and continuous wall‐like enclosures, and is contextualized through the appropriation of specific local circumstances such as topography and weather (Misrad ha‐Shikun, 1977, pp. 194–209).

Figure 5  Plan of Gilo ‐ blue line marks areas of dwelling‐units’ fortification (source: Gilo fortification administration).

Figure 6  Internal garden and path system in Gilo.

The cluster formation of the neighborhood was, both physically and socially (Ibid, p. 200) a means to increase built‐up compactness to intensify the relative density of the dwelling areas to insure the sense of urban living and, at the same time, to maintain quality of life deriving from green and open spaces. Concentrating the building clusters in the high areas around communal courtyards, and keeping the slopes and wadies as parks, has allowed for fairly low overall density (3dwelling units per 1,000 square meters); while at the same time maintaining an overall urban character (Misrad ha‐Shikun, 1973, p.153). However, the intention was not merely to encourage internal communal life. It was also important for overcoming the suburban nature of this remote neighborhood, far from the city center, by creating “…the feeling that it is an organic part of Jerusalem…” (Misrad ha‐Shikun, 1977, p.207). This was further achieved by maintaining the interior of the neighborhood as a communal core of public squares, gardens and playgrounds, and placing the dwellings on the perimeter, connected by circulation inward, but having an outward view through their windows. This inside‐outside contrast, which has made Gilo fortress‐like, is, of course, another reference to the Old City.

This goal, of connecting to Jerusalem on the one hand, and separating from Beit Jalla on the other, was also achieved through the provision of access to Jerusalem through an efficient road system, and public transportation that has allowed easy approach to the city’s different areas. But, the separation from Beit Jalla and connectedness to Jerusalem was mainly realized through the conception of Gilo as an edge. Built on the highest southern ridge of the city, its location was assumed to follow the historical border of Jerusalem ‐ “…a ridge which has been a clear boundary ever since Jerusalem’s early build‐up” (Ibid, p. 153)28. This rationale was based on the notion of Gilo as “clearly part of the wall enclosing Jerusalem” (Ibid, p. 209), thus dictating “…a continuous line of buildings on top of the hill, creating a ‘wall’ protecting the town from the outside…” (Misrad ha‐Shikun, 1973, p. 153).

As a frontier, Gilo was intended to indicate a clear boundary between a familiar interior, an extension of Jerusalem, and a menacing exterior ‐ a foreign land stretching all the way to Bethlehem and Beit Jalla (see Figure 4). Gilo’s “edge” was emphasized by its two different orientations ‐ “Outwardly [to the south‐west] there is a view of green open spaces, and inwardly [to the north‐east], a magnificent view of Jerusalem, with the old city in its midst, and with the crests of Mount Scopus and Augusta Victoria enclosing (sic) in the North” (Ibid), which completely ignored the view to Bethlehem and Beit Jalla. Thus, while clusters of semi‐detached stepped cottages with private yards are spread out on the side of Gilo facing Jerusalem, the side facing Beit Jalla is more like a wall29.

The architectural treatment of the housing in this unique topographical location has, with great sensitivity, taken full advantage of the superb panoramic views surrounding the entire site, as well as thinking of how it can be seen from different strategic points (see Figure 7, which is part of a series of studies of Gilo viewed from different locations). But, the wall‐like character of Gilo’s edge facing the vast “wilderness” of Beit Jalla has also taken full advantage of its superb situation. Careful consideration when developing the various building types has related topographical locations to the prevailing views (Misrad ha‐Shikun, 1977, p. 207). The architectural design of the buildings, offering a variety of dwelling units, has employed a similar approached to the views presented by this exceptional site, including many units designed with balconies, verandas, terraced gardens and panoramic windows. Thus the views of the “oriental” skyline have been treated as an enchanted, remote mirage, and this captivating view has clearly been one of Gilo’s main marketing attractions (see Figure 8).

Figure 7  A study of Gilo as viewed from Bethlehem.

Figure 8  A view of Beit Jalla from a window of an apartment on Anafa Street (photograph by author).

The fortification of Gilo

In the period leading up to the second wave of the Palestinian Intifada it seemed as if Gilo had fulfilled most of its goals. Offering better housing alternatives to Jerusalem’s middle‐class inner‐city populations, it has drawn in public‐housing‐eligible inhabitants, many of whom had gladly left the dense and poorly maintained inner‐city neighborhoods for this newly developed quasi‐suburban area. The improved housing units and the promise of high level schools and communal facilities have brought in many families seeking a better environment in which to raise children. Hence, selling most of the properties was quite easy, though of course, southernmost units overlooking the panoramic view of Bethlehem and Beit Jalla, offering the magnificent landscape of the hinterland, had greater appeal.

Fortification began at the end of 2000 when, as part of the second wave of the Palestinian Intifada, Gilo came under fire from Beit Jalla30. The fortification was based on the decision of the Prime Minister’s Office in November 2000, in response to the growing demands of Gilo’s residents and political Figures, especially from the Right Wing. ‘Beefing up’ residents’ discontent was taken up by members of the Likud party, in an effort to built opposition from the Right to Ehud Barak, the Labor Prime Minster. Among these much‐publicized acts taken by the opposition members of the Knesset was a declaration by the Jerusalem Right Wing Mayor Ehud Olmert that he would move his office to Gilo as an act of “solidarity with the hard‐hit residents”. His fictitious office was set up in the headquarters from which the bulletproofing process was later managed. Another example is the on‐line news from Gilo put out by the extremist Right Wing (Herut) Knesset member Michael Kleiner on his website while the events in Gilo were in the public’s attention.

Initial steps were taken to protect educational facilities and public outdoor spaces, by constructing protective walls on the streets facing Beit Jalla (see Figure 1). As the shooting continued, and with growing public pressure, it was decided to protect the residents’ homes as well, despite some obvious right wing disagreement. The decision was met with heavy opposition from hard core settler leaders, demanding retaliation instead of defensive measures. Sharon Katz, editor of Voices, said on the settlers’ broadcast channel (Arutz 7): “What about bulletproofing the caravans at Dagan? And bulletproofing every home, school and car in Neve Dekalim?…and bulletproofing the homes on the perimeter of Pesagot?31…and bulletproofing the homes in Hebron?…Wouldn’t it be smarter, instead of bulletproofing the entire country, to stop the Arabs who are shooting into every neighborhood?…Instead of bulletproofing the country and letting them continue shooting at us, stop the shooting!” (published in arutzsheva.org, December 13 2000). This view, and others voiced at the time, in fact illustrates the core problematic of the Israeli settlement project exposing its agenda of providing ostensible security based on the idea of a “Greater Israel”.

It was initially assumed that a defendable space, one protected room in each unit, would be sufficient. However, it was soon discovered that the layout of the units, their structural features, and the nature of their use, would not support such a scheme. It was then decided that all windows in the apartments facing Beit Jalla would be replaced by bullet‐proof glass set in lead‐enforced frames. The fortification process was administered through the Jerusalem municipality, which set up a special fortification council in Gilo, whose main mission was to organize the fortification procedure according to the government’s and the military’s direction. Thus, all decisive factors such as determining fortification standards, defining eligibility and priority, were decided by the IDF Rear Command Unit and implemented by the fortification council, and funding was provided by the government.

The shielded windows were based on ballistic specifications, custom‐manufactured and installed by a private firm. The units to be fortified were selected according to mapping of the “threat sources”32, defining the extent of the danger area, and hence the places in need of protection (see Figure 5 – the bold line marks the fortified areas). So far about 700 units have been installed at an average cost of $1,400‐1,700 per square meter of window. Assuming window surface of about 10–14 square meters per unit, it is estimated that about $17,000–20,000 were spent on each unit. Thus, with the government covering all expenses of this fortification, estimated expenditure so far is about 13 million US dollars33.

Gilo’s everyday lived experience

Gilo is not only a physical border, but also a socio‐cultural one, in which the everyday becomes a setting for conflicting realities of contested identities. Thus, it is not only a space defining the divide between nation‐states (Israel and Palestine), but also an arena of schism within a nation‐state (Israel). Despite its contested legal situation and its obvious geo‐political uncertainty, Gilo has been presented, from its initial planning stages, as part of Jerusalem. Good road connections to the city, efficient public transportation and municipal administration, as part of Greater Jerusalem, have served to obscure its actual location between two Palestinian towns ‐ Beit Jalla to its south and Beit Tzafafa to its north (see Figure 4). Public discourse has also obscured its reality, referring to it as a neighborhood, implying that it is part of Jerusalem, though its location vis a vis the city, its population size, and area range, could easily make it a small town in its own right. Declaring Gilo as an extension of Jerusalem conveniently obviates any reference to its location in the occupied territories beyond the Green Line. This is supported by the unilateral annexation of all areas around Jerusalem to the city and the declaration of the new neighborhoods as part of the greater metropolitan area. Gilo has thus become “a neighborhood in southeast Jerusalem” and not a settlement.

Of course, for the great majority of its residents, Gilo has become a home exactly because of its inherent contradictions and what they have obtained in terms of housing price and availability. Its ideological foundation and ambivalent borders, supported by political and economically‐based urban policies, attracted its initial inhabitants. No doubt they were lured by affordable housing, making Gilo a part of what is often referred to as “suburban colonization” (Newman, 2002), and its residents “economic settlers” (Foa, 2002).

Gilo’s innate contradictions, its unsettled geo‐political situation, even more painfully evident since the latest Intifada, are causing its residents acute anxiety. This is evident in the call to the government by many residents to “bring back security”, and the effort to see Gilo as distinguished from the occupied territories of the West Bank. Nonetheless, for some Gilo residents, its distinctive situation is, in fact, been a source of self‐respect and newly acquired identity. As discussions with recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union living on Anafa Street have shown, their borderline experience in Gilo has been a process whereby their Israeliness has been established. Women interviewed in their apartments overlooking Beit Jalla have expressed their strong sense of identity and belonging achieved through the hardship of daily life in Gilo34. In fact, one of these women, formally having no legal documents, told me how she had acquired citizenship immediately after her apartment was set on fire in one of the shooting incidents. With very little Hebrew, but with a great deal of pride, these women happily confront the “other” as part of their newly gained Israeliness, thereby re‐enacting the long‐lived Zionist legacy of pioneering and frontier. These women are the living proof of the home as national territory, obtained by the social deed of national citizenship.

The different lived experiences in Gilo’s complex reality of a state‐constructed everyday, show the need to overcome the often used binary oppositions of “self” and “other” (“us” and “them”) to enable the discovery of a multifaceted arena which, when carefully deconstructed, reveals layers of internal colonization, creating a highly contested class, gender, ethnic and national identity. The women interviewed came to Gilo because of its affordability and availability. However, living in Gilo, they are so caught up in the confrontation with the “other” (Palestinians) that they have no space to actually become aware of their own colonization. In fact, living in apartments sealed from the outside world for protection, and hence with little chance of making social connections in free and democratic urban open spaces, has made these women captives confined to their interior private spaces, and exposed to the media35. They have very little chance to experience any real democracy, let alone develop a sense of resistance.

As in the case of other fortressed and militarized urban situations, the urban model of spatial segregation has transformed Gilo into what has been referred to as “a fortified enclave”. Caldeira (1999), discussing the situation of Sao Paulo, has described this form of urban living as “privatized, enclosed, and monitored space for residential consumption, leisure and work”. Davis (1992), discussing Los Angeles, has also described a process of privatization of the urban space, whereby the city is divided into “fortified cells” of affluence and “places of terror” where police battle with the criminalized poor. These grim descriptions of urbanism have shown how obsession with security has supplanted hopes for urban reform and social integration in the modern city. What is clear in Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, Gilo, and many other cities, is the constant destruction of truly democratic urban space by fortification and militarization. The deteriorating quality of urban public life is eliminating the basic principles of openness and free circulation that are among the most significant organizing values of modern cities. Thus, especially in Gilo, where these processes are supported by public action and carried out by the government, the elimination of citizenship based on the public urban experience of democracy is most frightening.

The political role of the everyday

Unlike the use elsewhere of housing, to support the nation‐state’s territorial and social aims, Israel’s housing situation illustrates a further step in the politization of the everyday. Public intervention in housing in Israel has not been only a means to territorialization and spatialization, but also a process in which the State controls its citizens’ everyday life, making them soldiers in its geo‐political battle. Here the State not only shapes, with its housing policies, the socio‐spatial terrain during the initial stages of nation‐building, but in fact makes these landscapes of the everyday its battlefield in which it enacts its territorial wars.

The way in which private homes, the core of personal life, have been used to construct and defend national territory was in practice in Israel even before its establishment as a state. However, we see that the function of public intervention in the housing market has assumed a role far beyond that of providing improved housing facilities and shelter for populations who are presumed to be unable to take care of their own housing needs in the free market. A closer look at the practices and routines of housing provision in Israel reveals the dual political and social role of housing: shaping the land, through the Zionist proclamation of a new (Jewish) territory, and shaping identity by establishing a new (Israeli) citizen (Kallus and Law Yone, 2000). Thus, in the process of building the state, it could be said that its residents are in fact the basic raw material. More than concrete and cement, they are the resource needed to fulfill the national‐spatial aspirations of the state. In the specific context of the situation of Gilo, the state’s intentions have been revealed, exposing housing provision as a first‐rate national instrument. This paper has attempted to present the role of housing in the physical and social production of the everyday, through investigation of the formal strategies, planning policies and architectural practices implemented in creating Gilo. The role of the nation‐state in constructing the everyday becomes more evident when one examines the Gilo fortification process, where it has been not only an active agency of housing production, but also a leading force in everyday consumption.

While the customary meaning of the everyday is usually applied to situations in which the state is confronted by its subjects36, Gilo sheds light on a situation of confrontation with the exterior other. In Gilo, arguably still in the early stages of territorialization, the state is using the residents to establish control over territory, and the shaping of its space has been overshadowed by the attempt to ensure domination over newly created territory. The fortification measures are unconcealed measures to maintain day‐to‐day living. They respond to the residents’ demand to get on with their daily activities, as well as the state’s insistence on maintaining its obligation to its citizens’ wellbeing. Nevertheless, the maintained “normality” of the on‐going everyday routines, within a military terrain, is clearly a means to declare a political stand of assumed moral superiority. In fact, this intervention into the everyday is what apparently gives justification to the stand taken by the Israeli government in the Israel‐Palestinian dispute. As was declared by Ami Ayalon, former Israeli Chief of Staff, “…as much as the settlements in the occupied territories need the army, the army needs these settlements…” (Ha’aretz, Friday supplement, August 30, 2002).

In the context of this massive public intervention in private properties and the intrusion into the personal domain, the state’s dual agenda has come to the fore. Housing established in order to maintain a national asset has created doubt as to whether the space of the residential environment has ever been private. Hence the nation‐state’s interest in everyday life, which in times of crisis brings about an even stronger hold over space and territory. Furthermore, in the Israeli militarized culture (Carmi and Rosenfeld, 1989), where the margin between civilians and soldiers is constantly blurred, this strategy has obviously served the state well. But, Ben Gurion’s concept of the whole nation as an army (Kol Ha’Am Tzava), which was meant to unify and solidify Israeli national identity, has proven to become a double‐edged knife. When every house is a frontier, and every resident a warrior pressed into combat in his/her own and most private sphere, the war is “brought home”. It is all‐inclusive, incorporating the most intimate and personal domains. This strategy has deliberately turned the environment of the everyday into a civilian battlefield where the house has become the frontline and the streets a war zone, thereby extending the spatialization of territory by the State.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Hubert Law Yone, Nezar Alsayyad, Ananya Roy and Sibel Bozdogan for their valuable comments and suggestions made to an earlier version of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel Kallus

Rachel Kallus is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Haifa 32000, Israel. E‐mail [email protected]

Notes

Rachel Kallus is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Haifa 32000, Israel. E‐mail [email protected]

For analysis of the events of the second Intifada see: Tamari and Hammami, 2000.

The status of this urban development, built partially on territories occupied during the 1967 war, whether urban neighborhood or settlement, is under debate. Gilo could easily be considered as a sizeable city. However, considering it as part of the municipal area of Jerusalem has enabled to demographically maintain the city’s Jewish majority.

I am in debt to Tali Hatuka who introduced me to this notion and its relevancy to discussion of the everyday.

Nakba is an Arabic term meaning cataclysm or calamity. The term is often used amongst Palestinians to describe the outcome of the 1948 Arab‐Israeli War.

See for example the work of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, depicting 17th century everyday life in the city of Delft in the Netherlands.

Two recent books that take this position on architecture and urban design are: Harris and Berke, 1997; Chase, Crawford and Kaliski, 1999.

For example see the work of Venturi, such as: Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour, 1977

The notion of post‐partition does not deny colonial or postcolonial experience, but shifts attention to local power structure, spatial transformations and societal struggles resulting from the moment of partition.

Can architecture be considered a cultural production, and can it communicate meaning, let alone politicized meaning? See for example: Jameson, 1995.

This refers to the recent discussion of Israeli professional practice in the occupied territories (i.e. Segal and Weizman, 2002), but also to more general discussion of the political aspects of architecture (i.e. Leach, 1999). For discussion of the ideological limitations of architecture see: Tafuri, 1987. For historical discussion of the role of architecture in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, see: Monk, 2002. For the role of planning in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, see: Yiftachel, 1998.

On this issue, especially in the US context, see: Vale, 2000.

For this subject in relation to architecture, see: Bozdogan, 2002. For specific focus on Israel, see: Kallus and Law‐Yone, 2002.

On nation‐state building in settler societies, see: Stasiulis and Yuval‐Davis, 1995. For discussion of the American frontier, see: Turner, 1962. For discussion of Turner’s thesis, see: Faragher, 1994. For discussion of the 19^th Canadian frontier, see: Forkey, 2003. For Australia, see: Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999.

See for example Carmon and Czamanski, 1992.

Settlement and other practices involving land acquisition and management have been in the hands of non‐governmental institutions such as the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency. For further discussion of these practices, see: Yiftachel, and Kedar, 2000.

On what is often referred to as “the Judiation of the Galilee”, see: Yiftachel, 1992; Carmon, et al., 1990.

The publications of the Adva Center provide valuable data on Israeli government spending on infrastructure for the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. See for example: Swirski, Konor‐Atias, and Atkin, 2002.

Israel is another example of the use of modern architecture in nation‐state building. Discussion of evolving national modern architectural culture considers the home environment (e.g. Bozdogan, 2001). But, modern architecture in the design of public housing is usually discussed in the context of colonial attempts at modernization (e.g. Eleb, 2000).

See note 2.

According to the 1949 armistice agreement this territory was under Jordanian jurisdiction. It was occupied by Israel during the 1967 war. Jordan conceded these territories and, as an addendum to the 1977 Israeli‐Egyptian peace agreement, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were designated for Palestinian autonomy.

The Green Line is the boundary that separated Israel from the West Bank between 1949 and 1967. It resulted from the armistice signed in January 1949 during the Rhodes Agreements to end the 1948 Arab‐Israeli war. Today it exists as an informal 35‐year‐old administrative line separating civilian Israel from the occupied territories in the West Bank, and demarcating two different legal and structural systems. Although official Israeli maps do not show the Green Line boundary, Israel’s municipal boundary stops at the Green Line.

Har Homa lies between the Palestinian village of Umm Tuba and the town of Beit Sahur, to the east of Jerusalem, in a densely populated Palestinian area. Officially it is often represented as seated between Ramat Rahel and Gilo, to make it seem a logical extension of Jerusalem and the last link in the chain of new neighborhoods built around the city since 1967.

Areas of national priority are strategically defined according to the government’s political goals. Development in these areas is heavily subsidized by the state, either directly through generous loans given to home buyers, or through tax benefits and other financial adjustments.

For further discussion of these trends as a paradigmatic shift in architecture culture, see: Hays, 1998; Nesbitt, 1996. For discussion of these trends in urban design, see Ellin, 1996.

On new urbanism see: Katz, 1994.

For an overview of the public housing projects planned and built in Israel during the 1970’s and 1980’s, see the Housing Ministry publication Israel Builds (Misrad ha‐Shikun, 1973; 1977; 1988).

Reference is always made to Mediterranean architecture, hinting at the dismay with which architects view the highly contested spaces of the Middle‐Eastern context.

This is translated from the Hebrew, which is different from the English version on the same page.

The Jerusalem side of Gilo faces the Palestinian town of Beit Tzefafa that is considered part of the built‐up area of metropolitan Jerusalem.

It has been claimed that the shooters were not residents of Beit Jalla but members of the Tanzim, taking advantage of Beit Jalla’s strategic location, and fleeing upon Israeli retaliation (Yediot Aharonot, October 18, 2000, pp. 4–5; Ma’ariv, October 24, 2000, pp. 2–3)

Dagan and Pesagot are settlements in the West Bank; Neve Dekalim is a settlement in the Gaza Strip.

Interview with Uri Menahem, Vice‐Director of the Defense Council of the Jerusalem Municipality (February 12, 2002).

Ibid.

Limited number of home interviews with women recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union living on Anafa Street were conducted in June 2002.

On ethnic and citizenship perception of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, see: Shomski, 2001.

This view of the everyday is taken for example by Lefebvre, 1991 and De Certeau, 1984.