Into the Seam: the Architecture of Boundary

Erik Leahy, University of Nebraska - Lincoln Brian Kelly, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Abstract The ongoing conflict between the State of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is representative of a trend becoming more common in a modern, media-connected era: the physical walling off of the ‘first world’ from the ‘third world.’ This is contrasted by a seamless virtual media connection across that same line. Media simultaneously accentuates this divide while moving freely from one side to the other. Examples of this condition include the US-Mexico border, the 38th Parallel, the economic gaps surviving the Iron Curtain, the subdivision of the Balkans, and the division and nationalization of the Indian Subcontinent. These border zones reflect cultural, political, and economic divides. Recently, however, through a quasi-infrastructural manifestation, many of these borders have become physicalized through the building of walls of various types resulting in a breakdown of interaction and communication across these volatile divides. The intent of this project is to investigate the role of architecture at these barriers as a mediating zone across economic, political, and conflict divides. Israel represents a unique and volatile manifestation of this condition. Since its formation, the borders of Israel have been in a near-constant state of flux. The current status of the border, since the 1967 War, consists of a subtly shifting zone of land defining the seam between what is the State of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The primary tool of this seam zone is an 8-meter high concrete barrier, the West Bank Barrier Wall. The wall represents a massive infrastructure undertaking for the purpose of protection and control aimed at preventing terrorist bombers from entering Israel. However, the real effect of the physical presence of the wall is a situation of erasure, a removal of context and interaction. For the controlling government, the wall implies an end of ‘civilization’ before the unknown wilderness which might exist beyond. This wall is by its nature a non-place within the landscape, a background to the alienated worlds on either side of it, serving no benefit to the continued evolution of the conflict/peace-process. What is needed is a facilitator to create place and path across this divide, to create a possibility for interaction across the seam. This engagement would thereby evolve with the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself. This project proposed a ‘third place,’ a new space where neither side has a true upper hand: a neutralizer. This new space works into the understanding of strangeness and otherness defined by the philosopher Richard Kearney (Kearney 2005), at once neutralizing and stressing the roles of host and guest, known versus unknown. How can a conflict evolve and improve without an open and equal dialogue and

understanding? This project presented both an architectural proposal and media devices to foster a more robust understanding of the forces at play within the conflict across this critical border zone.

1 Walled World The world is in a state of division. Borderlines are being drawn and increasingly, since the middle of the 20th Century, are physicalized through architecture and infrastructural systems. These physical boundaries represent ethnic, cultural, language, and economic borders. Realized through concrete, steel, and wire fences, these barriers entrench and enforce a status quo and prevent further engagement and dialogue, while dividing the world into the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Many of these barriers sit along what is the border between the first world and third world, protecting us from them, the known from the unknown. These borders are heightened spots of violence, armed conflict and illegal immigration. Though the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain fell at the end of the century, less publicized but no less physical barriers have appeared with increasing frequency around the globe at these contentious spots with the goal of preventing movement of people, arms, and illegal goods across these borders and the side effect of preventing dialogue, as well.

Figure 1. The West Bank Barrier and the Israeli-Palestinian seam zone, image by author.

2 The Conflict and the Seam The West Bank Barrier is the latest chapter of a narrative that has existed since biblical times. This long term and deeply emotional conflict stems from the numerous varied ethnic and religious groups that have claimed the land of Israel-

Palestine as their home and has continued into the modern era. One result of this conflict is a near continuous shifting and redrawing of the borders between the State of Israel and its neighbors. (Figure 2) The 1948 Armistice line, the result of the first Arab-Israeli war and known as the green line, is still the internationally accepted border between the State of Israel and Palestine. The 1967 war brought significant border change as the West Bank and Gaza Strip became militarily controlled and occupied by Israel. Claims of conquest and the claims of international law have laid the foundation for future conflicts of territorial control.

Figure 2. The major shifts of the Israeli border, image by author. Within this zone of conflicting realities (green-line and occupation) the West Bank Separation Barrier (Figure 1) began construction in 2003 under Israeli Defense Force direction with the goal of protecting Israel from Palestinian suicide bombings in the wake of the 2000-2005 Palestinian uprising, the Second Intifada. The projected path of the barrier has seen numerous revisions due to lobbying efforts from both sides, but remains situated primarily inside the Palestinian West Bank. While the defined green line between Israel and Palestine is 196 miles long, the actual path of the barrier runs 437 miles as it snakes between Israeli and Palestinian lands, the results of litigation to include or exclude communities from the seam zone. The average width of the barrier zone, which runs along the wall length, is 200 ft. and consists of a series of surveillance and monitoring equipment. The actual manifestation of the wall itself is composed of two systems: an electronically monitored fence which exists primarily in rural areas

and a prefabricated concrete barrier which exists primarily in heavily urbanized areas and has become the primary face of the antagonism of the occupation. The concrete barrier runs for over 10% of the length of the seam zone at a height of 26 feet, essentially cutting off all contact or engagement across its length. Architecture, represented as an infrastructure of occupation and oppression, has become the background of daily life in the West Bank, an ever-present reminder of control, dominance, repression and occupation. The wall represents a system of separation and erasure through shock and awe. How can this physical manifestation and power be subverted without delving further towards conflict? Political theorist Zeev Jabotinsky stated that the Arabs would resolve to prevent the establishment of Israel. In order to preserve its existence, Israel would require overwhelming military superiority and be prepared to defend itself into perpetuity (Sorkin 2005). This is the foundation of the petrified state and finds itself realized through the wall. Walls are one of the basic architectural elements and are used to both separate and define space and usage. Lebbeus Woods offered a distinction between free space (void space that is the typical space of programmatic use) and walls (object space that is the space defining the periphery) (Woods 1996). When the metaphor of Jabotinsky’s iron wall (a military defensive stance) became manifest as a physical reality it took the opposite meaning. It suggests that there is no possibility for further engagement and no need for dialogue across the seam. According to Foucault, power and space share a certain relationship, but while architectural form may influence social behavior, buildings do not have inherent politics. Political aims are applied on the architecture through an outside force (Leach 1996). In this case that applied political agenda is the perceived security benefit of the wall and the power struggle of the occupation. The wall was born in politics and serves power. Admittedly, there is a security element to the wall exhibited through reduced suicide bombings in Israel since the construction of the wall, as well as defining a distinct and real border between Israeli and Palestinian space. Additionally, the wall serves as both a social and economic barrier. All crossing of the seam zone, both personal and economic, is controlled by Israeli military and police and requires permits and passes. There is a variety of tactics at play within the military occupation of the west bank, tactics that represent control and observation and a significant imbalance of power. Military closures and checkpoints, aerial surveillance, precision strikes, ‘gated’ communities, bypass roadways, concrete barriers and electric fences. These are the tactics of modern urban control and occupation, tactics the Israeli Defense Force has pioneered in urban combat. Think tanks have been formed studying the work of Deleuze and Guattaris theories of the modern urban experience to incorporate not just into urban warfare, but warfare against the urban (Weizman 2007).

The most often encountered (and loudest yelled) positions on the state of the wall are either that it be removed, responding to a social and economic demand and illegality, or that it must remain, responding to a need for security and control. These two polar scenarios look past the opportunity of the seam zone as a spatial and social definer. There are both costs and benefits to the current situation of the wall. Is there a third potentiality that creates a new space, a space that bridges the divide of the seam and creates a new engagement and opportunity across it?

3 On Dialogue The conflict between Israel and Palestine is a unique condition of war. It is not an active offensive in the traditional understanding of war and conflict. There is no shifting dynamic of armies massed against each other. Rather, it is a latent conflict that has degenerated into a state of attrition and occupation. Demonstrations of ability and power serve as symbolic reminders from both sides of the others existence. As a system, this realizes itself as a conflict of dialogue. At its most basic state, a dialogue is an exchange. Two or more sides are involved and something is exchanged, whether it is ideas and opinions or simply a demonstration of existence and ability. These dialogues can be positive, such as a political negotiation for exchanges of territory or an intellectual conference exchanging ideas between Israeli and Palestinian scholars. They can also be negative engagements where every retaliatory rocket or missile strike from either side is a form of dialogue. A Palestinian boy throwing stones at an Israeli soldier while he fires tear gas back is a dialogue between two sides. These dialogues are not coordinated, tactical responses to necessarily elicit a victory. Rather, they are tools of a conflict of attrition and continuation. The conflict feeds itself. Dialogues precipitate more dialogues and more ‘exchange.’ Even the act of refusing exchange, in the way of freezing of political negotiations is exchanging a particular message to the other side, and in so doing continues the dialogue. The West Bank security fence contradicts this idea of a conflict of dialogue. The barrier represents a removal of interaction. It is a blank background that allows for continuity along itself on either side but removes continuity across, between the two sides. Along the wall is a barren zone left emptied of productive use as a sort of buffer zone between the two sides. This seam is not valueless and should not be underestimated. While the wall is a tool of occupation and oppression, the role of a seam or buffer between these two long struggling peoples holds value as a definition of border and distinction. Past this void zone begins the urbanization of the seam. Towns, villages, settlements, neighborhoods, refugee camps, and military points expand and mimic each other across this void. Over time, this urbanization is certain only to increase. High birthrates among Palestinians and orthodox Jews, as well as an intensive immigration campaign by Israel will lead to future population increases

within an extremely limited area of land. One can speculate that this population increase will grow within the cheaper and strategically important land of the seam zone. Tactically, the urbanization along the seam equates to control and supervision of that area and becomes another tool of the conflict of dialogue. This is a future of ultra urbanization in the Holy Land. This seam zone that exists between Israel and Palestine has the option to remain an empty, abandoned land that reflects the lack of communication and misunderstanding of the current conflict. The seam will become the unused backyard where the edges of society are pushed. This in no way will benefit the situation. A reactivation of dialogue across the seam is necessary for the next step, and hopeful resolution, of the conflict.

4 The Project As a speculative design proposal this project proposes the creation of the seam zone to become a new landscape of dialogue, a reflection of the shifts and exchanges of the conflict. Pathways overlap and cross each other, set within an infrastructural landscape. The architecture attempts to establish the framework for the occupation and exchange across the seam.

Figure 3. Site plan, facitility at the Pisgat Ze'ev - Shufat seam zone, image by author.

The design occupies the natural valley that exists between the Pisgat Ze’ev and Shufat areas outside of Jerusalem. (Figure 3) The facility becomes an extension of the landscape, a functioning extension of the unused ground below it. In the scheme, the existing ground plane is abandoned as a condition of terra sacre, ground set aside from the normal everyday uses of landscape and allegiance to a particular side. This existing ground plane is left inaccessible to both sides, and retained for water drainage retention.

Figure 4. Project model, layered landscape of the seam zone, image by author. Above the ground plane a series of structures are elevated creating an artificial ground plane within the seam zone. (Figure 4) Each land structure is claimed and connected to one side in an irregular pattern that creates happenstance adjacencies. It is upon these land structures in which active use is returned to the seam, including agricultural cultivation, pasture grazing and public recreation and sport (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Project model, inhabitation and engagement of the seam zone, image by author.

From each side of the seam a series of circuitous walkways venture into the neutral zone serving as a connecting tissue from the urban fabric on either side to the landforms within the seam. While the walkways offer connection from each side to the landforms they control, the two systems are separate and unconnected. They overlap and bypass each other but never intersect, offering near constant visual connection from one side to the other. The project physicalizes latent conflicts, interactions, and dialogues in an environment representative of the strangeness and uncertainty of the occupation itself.

5 Conclusions The focus of this project has always been on an exploration of the speculative and the conceptual, critiquing the popular view of a need for a barrier and military control in such a charged and conflicted location. This project was more about asking the question what is architecture’s role in this conflict, rather than proposing a solution through built work. Taking inspiration from the design itself, the success of this project hinges on its ability to create a dialogue and interaction and bring awareness to the role of border infrastructures not just in Israel and Palestine, but also around the developing world.

References Kearney, Richard and Victor E. Taylor. “A Conversation with Richard Kearney.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory vol. 6 no. 2 (Spring 2005): 17-26. Leach, Neil. “Architecture or Revolution?” Architectural Design: Beyond the Revolution (1996): 8-11. Sorkin, Michael ed. 2005. Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace. New York : The New Press. Weizman, Eyal. 2007. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. New York : Verso. Woods, Lebbeus. “Walls,” Architectural Design: Beyond the Revolution (1996): 68-75.