Belonging, memory and the politics of planning in Israel

Abstract

This paper focuses on contradictory expressions of memory and belonging of Jews and Palestinians in Israel. It examines the conflicts over planning procedures, which engage such contradictory memories, and belonging at the national and local scales of planning. It explores how the dynamics of power relations can operate differently at each level and can result in planning resolutions, which link in different ways to the constructions of memory and belonging of Jews and Palestinians. The paper begins with an overview of the expressions of belonging and commemoration at the national scale of planning; in the agenda of the Council for the Restoration and Preservation of Historic Sites (CRPHS) in Israel and the rhetoric of the government National Master Plan of Israel (TAMA/35). It challenges this rhetoric in two local planning events: ‘the road and the graveyard’ and the ‘new Jewish neighbourhood and the old Palestinian village’.

Keywords:

• belonging
• memory
• planning
• Palestinians
• Jews
• power relations

Notes

The non‐Jewish citizens of Israel, especially the ‘Arabs’ have several labels, each derives from a different ideological perspective. The most common is ‘Arabs’, but in the last few years some of them started labelling themselves as ‘Palestinian citizens of Israel’ to establish the national Palestinian identity and contact with the Palestinians living in the Palestinian Authority. In this paper I will use this latter terminology (see elaborated discussion in Rabinowitz 1993).

The Palestinians define themselves as ‘internal refugees’ to signify the situation of their expulsion from their native villages to other villages (see, for elaboration, Cohen 2000).

This is the famous site located in the Judea Desert which commemorates the myth of courage and heroism of the ‘few’ Jewish people in their fights against the ‘many’ Romans in 73 AD.

One such important site is the battle in Tel Hai in the north of Israel which emphasizes the courage and heroism of Joseph Trumpeldor, the leader of a few Jewish settlers who said, just before his death: ‘It's good to die for our land’.

Even academic research and books such as Myths and Memory: Transfigurations of Israeli Consciousness, published in 1996 (Ohana and Wistrich 1996), did not include any work on Palestinian myths and memory but only of those of the Jews.

The NGOs working on these themes are: The National Committee for the Defense of the Internal Refugees, Zochrot (Hebrew for remember), Badil—Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Al Awda—The Palestinian Right to Return Coalition‐UK, Shamal, CBU—Committee for the Uprooted of Kafar Bir'em, The Association of the Forty, and many more.

This is the case of Burkan—a Palestinian who appealed against the Ministry of Finance decision to allow Jews only to live in the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, Jeursalem. His appeal has been rejected (Benvenisti 1998).

This is the case of Avitan—a Jewish resident who appealed against the Land Authority's decision to allow Arab Bedouin only to live in their towns in the Negev, south Israel. His appeal has been rejected (Benvenisti 1998).

Although this list does includes buildings from the Templar period and some Palestinian buildings in Haifa, their proportion, as compared to Jewish heritage sites, is very small.

This amendment defines ‘site’ as: ‘a building or a group of buildings … which a planning authority considers as historically, nationally, architecturally or archeologically important’.

This convention defines sites for preservation and criteria for preservation. The criteria are: ‘sites which indicate some primordial importance, a site which shows evidence of historical importance, a site which is connected to the life of an important figure, a site which has an important architectural character, a site which indicates culture and way of life, a site which has historical landscape importance and a site with significant use of building materials’ (www.shimur. co.il).

Baruch Goldstein was a Jewish Israeli medical doctor who shot twenty‐nine Palestinians in 1994 in Hebron. His act raised a tremendous amount of condemnation among the majority of Jewish people in Israel, es pecially around the intentions of some Jewish groups to turn his grave into a site of memory and as a symbol of the fight against the Palestinians.

Azaryahu and Kook (2002) identify such street naming as an implied message of historical continuity between the struggle waged by the Arabs in the 1930s and that of the 1990s.

This objection has been sent to ‘Bimkom’—Planners for Planning Rights in Israel—an NGO working to promote human rights issues in planning.

I use pseudonyms here as this case is still ongoing. I was asked not to mention specific names.

This is not the only rationale for the objection. Ruth argues that the hill also has historical and archeological importance both to the Jewish and Muslim living in the area and that it is also a forest reservation with agricultural terraces and some old trees.

Other objections were submitted by the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayment Le'Israel), claiming that this is a natural site of conservation, and Zochrot (Hebrew for remember), an NGO which aims to promote the acknowledgement of the right to return of the Palestinians. A third objection has been submitted in the name of the former residents of the village.

One dunam = 0.1 hectare.

They became what is titled: ‘internal refugees’. See Note 2.

For example, some of those settlements included ten to fifteen families only but they received tens of dunams (Efrat 1984).

These events deeply affected the problematic relations between Jews and Arabs in the Galilee. It is no coincidence that the second Intifada, which began in September 2000, affected these delicate Arab–Jewish relations and in October 2000 peaceful demonstrations against the Israeli government policy in the Occupied Territories shifted into violent riots in which thirteen Arab citizens were killed by the police.

It was established as a co‐operative village (Moshav Shitufi) but in the 1980s became a community village.

She emphasized that she met them in educational activities for her children, in which both Jews and Arabs participated.

Ruth herself mentioned the fact that she also has a personal interest in objecting to this option as it is located fairly near to her own home but she emphasized to me that this was not the motivation of her objection.