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Up/Rooting: Breaching Landscape Architecture in the Jewish-Arab City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2017

Naama Meishar
Naama Meishar*
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University Technion–Israel Institute of Technology
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article portrays and theorizes a new utterance of landscape architecture within Israeli Jewish-Arab urbanity, which aims to represent the prolonged and multifaceted Palestinian urban loss since 1948 in the design of a major city park. The analysis of design discourses at Jaffa Slope Park examines differing Israeli and Palestinian landscape sign systems. Dominant and breaching landscape architecture utterances in the constructed landscape of the park will be interpreted and theorized in the context of the discursive landscape sign systems, together with the local post-1948 history of urban institutional ruination and planning. The park's design involves both the intensive use and destabilization of a traditional Zionist/Israeli landscape mold that aims at greening ’Ereẓ Yisra'el and at concealing ruined pre-1948 Palestinian locales under green shields. Through a close reading of the park's landscape, the paper explores ethical, political, and allegorical utterances of landscape architecture, immersed in both Israeli and Palestinian landscape semiotics, yet undermining these sign systems at the same time.

Type
Jews and Cities
Information
AJS Review , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 89 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2017 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to landscape architect Alisa Braudo for generously sharing her constructive insights and extensive planning materials. This paper elaborates on a fragment of my PhD dissertation conducted at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for which I am thankful to my instructors Professor Hannan Hever and Professor Hubert Law-Yone. My thanks go to Marilyn Reizbaum for her close reading and encouragement, and to the supportive senior and fellow members of the Jews and Cities group, especially Eli Lederhendler and Scott Ury who read the paper closely. I thank Mandel Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University, where I started developing some of these ideas as a doctoral fellow in the Jews and Cities group, and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Tel Aviv University, where I completed this paper as a postdoctoral fellow. Thanks to Yeela Gundar for her meticulous graphic design of the cartographic data. Finally, I thank the anonymous readers and AJS Review editors for encouraging me to sharpen and clarify my ideas.

References

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2. All photographs were taken by the author.

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22. Visits to the park and its documentation were conducted by the author between 2008 and 2014.

23. This paper will not include a study of the park's reception by its users. For a first reception study of environmental comfort in Jaffa Slope Park, see Hatuka, Tali and Saaroni, Hadas “The Need for Advocating Regional Human Comfort Design Codes for Public Spaces: A Case Study of a Mediterranean Urban Park”, Landscape Research 39, no. 3 (2014): 287–304 Google Scholar.

24. For the history of the concept, see Ghanim, “Poetics of Catastrophe,” 25–26. For a recent reconceptualization that argues that “The nakba is not only a memory; it is a continuous reality that has not stopped since 1948,” see Khoury, Elias, “Rethinking the Nakba”, Critical Inquiry 38, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 263Google Scholar.

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29. Golan, Spatial Change, 15, 90–95.

30. Urban master plans 479 (1963) and 666 (1956), viewed in the Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality's GIS system: https://gisn.tel-aviv.gov.il/iview2js/index.aspx (accessed June 7, 2016).

31. For a discussion of systematic destruction of pre-1948 Palestinian urbanity by the State of Israel, see Kolodney, Ziva and Kallus, Rachel, “The Politics of Landscape (Re)Production: Haifa between Colonialism and Nation Building”, Landscape Journal 27, no. 2 (2008): 180CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rotbard, Sharon, White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Yacobi, Haim, “The Architecture of Ethnic Logic: Exploring the Meaning of the Built Environment in the ‘Mixed’ city of Lod – Israel”, Geografiska Annaler 84B (2002): 171–87Google Scholar; Yiftachel, Oren and Yacobi, Haim, “Urban Ethnocracy: Ethnicization and the Production of Space in an Israeli ‘Mixed City,’” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21, no. 6 (December 2003): 673–93Google Scholar.

32. Kolodney and Kallus, “From Colonial to National Landscape,” 332.

33. Monterescu, Contrived Coexistence, 41–42.

34. About 2,000 housing units were demolished until 1990, See Monterescu, Contrived Coexistence, 42–43, 316–17; Shaqr, Ha-kehilah ha-ʻaravit be-Yafo, 17; Mazawi and Khuri-Makhoul, “Spatial Policy in Jaffa.”

35. “Midron Yafo,” January 25, 1981 (memorandum from Adam Mazor to the City Engineer), Tel Aviv–Jaffa City Engineer Department Archive, brown file of Urban Master Plan 2236–1 (documents in Israeli archives are in Hebrew). A state coasts’ master plan (no. 13) from the 2000s dismissed this scheme and designated the reclaimed land to a public park only.

36. Athamny, “Ledovev ’et ha-kirot,” 74–75.

37. On this cultural shift, see Nitzan-Shiftan, Alona, “Seizing Locality in Jerusalem”, in The End of Tradition, ed. AlSayyad, Nezar (New York: Routledge, 2003), 236Google Scholar.

38. “Midron Yafo—Taskir hashpaʻah ʻal ha-sevivah,” (1986), 19–33, Israel State Archive, Jerusalem, moch-mmi-000bikx (GL11/15621).

39. Urban master plan 2360 was validated in 1995, see Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality's GIS system: https://gisn.tel-aviv.gov.il/iview2js/index.aspx (accessed June 7, 2016).

40. Four hundred eighty-nine objections to urban master plan 2360 were handed to the Tel Aviv District Planning Committee. Many of them claimed that the plan does not prioritize or nurture the Arab community. See “Minutes of the Tel Aviv District Planning Committee,” October 12, 1988, Tel Aviv–Jaffa City Engineer Department Archive, brown file of urban master plan 2236–8.

41. Wallerstein, Sebastian and Silverman, Emily with Meishar, Naama, eds. Meẓukat ha-diyur be-kerev ha-’ukhlusiyah ha-falestinit be-Yafo: Sof ʻidan ha-dayarut ha-mugenet be-nikhse reshut ha-pituʼaḥ [Housing distress within the Palestinian community in Jaffa: The end of protected tenancy in Jaffa] (Jerusalem: Bimkom, 2009), 33–35 Google Scholar.

42. Although the ethical component is essential to this paper, I do not have adequate space to elaborate on this moral facet, which influences landscape architecture practice in the construction of the park.

43. Monterescu, Contrived Coexistence, 22, 41–45.

44. Ibid., 38–45. See also Tali Hatuka's description of Tel Aviv and Jaffa as constantly joining and separating by means of architectural design and spatial performative activities: Violent Acts and Urban Space in Contemporary Tel Aviv: Revisioning Moment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 71–98 Google Scholar.

45. Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality et al., Summary of Public Participation Meetings (2006) [digital PPT]; interview with Alisa Braudo, Ramat Gan, February 30, 2008.

46. Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality et al., Summary of Public Meetings, 23, 13, 19 (translation by the author).

47. Helphand, Dreaming Gardens, 52–53.

48. Hunt, John Dixon and Willis, Peter, to, introduction The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620–1820 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Taylor, Hillary A., “Urban Public Park: 1840–1900: Design and Meaning”, Garden History 21, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 205Google Scholar. For an example of the adoption of the English garden style park scheme in 1869 Cairo, see Abu-Lughod, Janet, “A Tale of Two Cities: The Origins of Modern Cairo”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 7, no. 4 (1965): 443–44Google Scholar.

49. Czerniak, Julia, “Speculating on Size”, in Large Parks, ed. Czerniak, Julia and Hargreaves, George (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 19–34 Google Scholar; Howett, Catherine, “Systems, Signs, and Sensibilities: Sources for a New Landscape Aesthetics”, Landscape Journal 6, no. 1 (1987): 8Google Scholar; Rackham, Simon “Beyond Landscape MacArchitecture: New Languages, New Landscapes”, Landscape Review 2, no. 3 (1996): 33–44Google Scholar.

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52. The first imagery for this scheme can be traced to Herzl's Altneuland. See Schwartz, Yigal, The Zionist Paradox: Hebrew Literature and Israeli Identity (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2014), 59Google Scholar, 64–68, 92.

53. Liphschitz, Nili and Biger, Gideon, “Mediniyut ha-yeʼur shel ha-tenuʻah ha-ẓiyonit be-ʼEreẓ Yisra'el 1895–1948”, [The Zionist movement's afforestation policy in ʼEreẓ Yisra'el 1895–1948], Cathedra 80 (June 1996): 88–108 Google Scholar.

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56. Meishar, Naama, “Fragile Guardians: Nature Reserves and Forests Facing Arab Villages”, in Constructing a Sense of Place: Architecture and Zionist Discourse, ed. Yacobi, Haim (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 303–25Google Scholar; Tamar Novick, “Milk & Honey: Technologies of Plenty in the Making of a Holy Land, 1890–1960” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2014), 165–90.

57. Braverman, Irus, Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 29–114 Google Scholar; Cohen, Shaul Ephraim, The Politics of Planting: Israeli-Palestinian Competition for Control of Land in the Jerusalem Periphery (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Afforestation had environmental goals as well, see Liphschitz and Biger, “Afforestation Policy.”

58. Zerubavel, “National Icon,” 60, 81–82.

59. There is an unresolved dispute regarding the essence and appearance of Palestine's landscapes prior to Zionist imagination and the Jewish settlement projects. Different comments by travelers vary from disappointment to appreciation, depending on geographical and cultural background. For an overview of travelers’ comments, see Cohen, Politics of Planting, 42–44. For a study of sustainability and modern elements in the cultural landscapes of Arabs in the mountainous Nablus area in the mid-nineteenth century, see Doumani, Beshara, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 3–4 Google Scholar.

60. Kadman, Erased from Space, 41–42, 87, 111.

61. Enis, Ruth, “On the Pioneering Work of Landscape Architects in Israel: A Historical Review”, Landscape Journal 11, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 30Google Scholar.

62. Golan, Spatial Change, 131.

63. Based on a 1935 English-language Mandatory map, accessed with the courtesy of Talia Margalit. The location of all the pre-1948 Palestinian settlements in the Tel Aviv–Jaffa area are indicated also in Zochrot's “Nakba Map”: http://zochrot.org/en/article/54772 (accessed July 10, 2016).

64. “Netiʻat ha-park ha-leʼumi me-ʻever la-Yarkon,” 5 May 1952 (memorandum by Seʻadiya Shoshani, the head of the Planting and Gardening Department in Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality), viewed on Tel Aviv–Jaffa municipality's website: http://park.co.il/he/%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%91%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D/ (accessed July 18, 2016). This memorandum announces a planting ceremony on May 13, 1952 “near the Shaykh-Muwannis village with presence of the prime minister” (translation by the author).

65. “Nakba Map,” http://zochrot.org/en/article/54772 (accessed July 10, 2016).

66. See Yiftahel, Oren, “‘Ethnocracy’: The Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine”, Constellations 6, no. 3 (September 1999): 364–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67. For ideology's dissemination through everyday landscapes, see Daniels and Cosgrove, introduction to The Iconography of Landscape, 1.

68. Monterescu, Contrived Coexistence, 22, 38–45, 41–45.

69. Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality at el., Summary of Public Meetings, 18 (translation by the author).

70. Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality at el., Summary of Public Meetings, 15.

71. Some of these species and the aesthetics of agricultural landscapes penetrated urban landscape architecture projects other than parks. See Alon-Mozes, “Landscape and Agriculture,” 166–80.

72. Kark, Ruth, Jaffa: A City in Evolution 1799–1917, trans. Brand, Gila (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1990), 70–72 Google Scholar.

73. Ghanim, “Poetics of Catastrophe,” 35–37; Ben-Zvi, Sabra, 50–56, 120–45.

74. Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality et al., Summary of Public Meetings, 15 (translation by the author).

75. Interview with the park's landscape architect, Alisa Braudo, Ramat Gan, February 24, 2008.

76. Ram, Uri, “Ways of Forgetting: Israel and the Obliterated Memory of the Palestinian Nakba”, Journal of Historical Sociology 22, no. 3 (September 2009): 366–95Google Scholar. In March 2011, after the park was already constructed, the Israeli Knesset passed the “Nakba Law” that allows the government to reduce public tax funds for institutions that support expressions of grief over the establishment of the State of Israel. See “40 amendment to the Law of the Grounds for the Budget,” http://www.knesset.gov.il/Laws/Data/BillKnesset/315/315.pdf. See also Egoz, Shelley, “Deconstructing the Hegemony of Nationalist Narratives through Landscape Architecture”, Landscape Research 33, no. 1 (January 2008): 35–39 Google Scholar.

77. Interviews with Alisa Braudo, Ramat Gan, February 24, 2008 and March 30, 2008.

78. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 44–45.

79. Ibid., 50–51.

80. Ibid., 38–39, 43–45. See also his argument that “essence is interest … egoisms struggling with each other,” Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 4.

81. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 6–7. See also Critchley, Simon, The Ethics of Deconstruction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2014), 259–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 6–15, 45–51.

83. Critchley, Ethics of Deconstruction, 127. Critchley extensively cites Jacques Derrida on that matter, ibid., 121–29.

84. Hunt, John Dixon, Gardens and the Picturesque (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992), 39–40 Google Scholar, 58; Taylor, “Design and Meaning,” 205.

85. Poeisis is the Greek term for a creative activity, “the actual work of making,” through which an art work is founded; see Corner, James, “Representation and Landscape”, in Theory in Landscape Architecture: A Reader, ed. Swaffield, Simon (1992; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 145Google Scholar.

86. Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, 222–23 (emphasis is original).

87. There is another landscape architecture expression that reverberates with Palestinian ruins in two of the park's squares, which are paved with broken colored tiles collected from the waste mound on the site. For an interpretation of this type of paving as an essentializing, noncritical design gesture, see Meishar, Naama, “In Search of Meta-Landscape Architecture: Jaffa Slope Park's Design and the Ethical Experience”, Journal of Landscape Architecture 14 (2012): 40–45 Google Scholar; for an interpretation of the paving as a multidirectional memory design gesture see Mann, “Apartment to Remember.”

88. Interview with Alisa Braudo, Ramat Gan, March 30, 2008.

89. Ruderal species grow in areas that have been disturbed by humans, such as on the margins of roads or fields.

90. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 6–7, 46–47; Critchley, Ethics of Deconstruction, 127, 128–29.

91. The prefix “meta-” draws on self-questioning as well as on a transgression beyond the known or the same. See Meishar, “Meta-Landscape Architecture,” 40–45.

92. Critchley, Simon, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (London: Verso, 2007), 13Google Scholar (emphasis added).

93. Critchley, Infinitely Demanding, 92, 120, 127.

94. Corner, James, “Critical Thinking and Landscape Architecture”, Landscape Journal 10, no. 2 (Fall 1991): 161–62Google Scholar (emphasis added). As was mentioned in the exposition, the disciplinary discourse of political practice is limited due to reasons I will not be able to sort out here. Strangely, Corner confined critical action to the practice of landscape architects and dismissed scholars’ agency of critique of landscape architecture, see ibid., 160.

95. Hever, Hannan, “Shir politi” [Political poem], Mafteaḥ 4 (Fall 2011): 231–32Google Scholar.

96. Shenhav, Yehuda, “‘Al ha-’otonomiyut shel ha-politi” [The autonomy of the political], Theʼoriah u-bikoret 34 (Spring 2009): 185–88Google Scholar.

97. Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 57–58 Google Scholar, 199; Rancière, Jacques, “Ten Theses on Politics”, Theory and Event 5, no. 3 (2001): 26Google Scholar.

98. Belsey, Catherine, Critical Practice (London: Routledge, 2002): 91–92 Google Scholar; Hever, “Political poem,” 235.

99. Benjamin, Walter, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, introduction by George Steiner, trans. Osborne, John (1998; London: Verso, 2009), 177–78Google Scholar.

100. This upper point of the slope, with the wreckage lying atop, was left untouched during the park's construction.

101. Hever, “Political poem,” 235 (translation by the author).