Although they were hesitant, Karen Lee and Yehuda agreed to move the proposed border line so it ran down the center of Assael Street—a decision they made without even knowing that the dead-end road separated East and West Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967.
“It just made sense,” Yehuda said.
The architects’ initial plan envisioned a concrete wall running down the center of Assael Street, where the barbed wire once separated the neighbors, creating a physical barrier to replace the invisible one many say has risen there over the years.
But the proposed border went even further than Dayan and Tell’s marks by actually cutting Assael in half. Palestinians would access the street from the south. Israelis would get to their homes from the north. If the walls went up as planned, Arab families at the beginning of the street, like the Risheks and Bazlamits, would be Palestinian citizens, able to get to their homes via Assael Street. For those living at the top end, like Imm Fadi and Maha Salhab, Palestine would end right outside their front doors. Assael Street on their doorstep would be part of Israel. The wall would cut Assael in the middle, right where Yakov Almakayes’s widely reviled building towers over its neighbors. That building could play a special role in the Geneva Initiative plan: One proposal suggests turning the multistory apartment complex into a place that would be shared by Israel and Palestine. Like the No Man’s Land promenade, the building’s ownership could shift as circumstances demanded: it could be shared; it could be split in half; one side or the other could assume complete control.
The architects saw a shared building as one way to consciously create careful connections between Israelis and Palestinians. Karen Lee found precedent for the idea on the border of France and Switzerland, where half of Basel’s international airport—known as EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiberg—is run by the Swiss, and the other half is run by the French.
“It’s not only a hope that the building, the structure, the landscape will do it alone,” Karen Lee said. “You have to remember that the resentment people have of the past is also a result of that contradiction they lived in. It was not something they chose. It was the result of the war. It was the result of Jerusalem being annexed.”
The simmering resentment, she said, would evaporate once residents in Abu Tor were living on a dividing line Israelis and Palestinians agreed upon.
“When Israelis and Palestinians sign something and say, ‘This is how we see our future coexistence, side-by-side,’ it’s a whole different ball game,” Karen Lee said. “Abu Tor could be a case study that everybody looks up to, not the thing that illustrates the worst that has happened. In that case, yes, the landscape has to facilitate and build and nurture the future coexistence in a way that they don’t know it yet.”
The idea of creating buildings and parks run by both sides sounds like a fantasy to plenty of people who look on the decades of mistrust and conflict as a bad precedent. The families who lived here are scarred by their personal histories. They’re wary of the people who want to divide them once again. Yehuda and Karen Lee say they aren’t unmoored from reality. Like many Israelis, the pair pride themselves on their ability to stand firm in the face of what often seems like impossible odds.
“We are not naïve,” Yehuda said. “It seems, in the beginning, that we are kind of rainbow people.”
The two are used to being ridiculed for their ideas. When they first presented their plans in college, they were humiliated in front of their peers. They were told they would never make it as architects. But they persisted.
Yehuda and Karen Lee came to their work from two very different places.
Karen Lee was an adopted daughter raised in an apolitical home by a stay-at-home mom and air-traffic-controller dad. She was always searching for different ways to look at the conflict that framed their lives. But it may have been her move to the Gaza Strip border in 2008 that galvanized her belief in dividing Jerusalem. Karen Lee and her husband decided to move to a southern Israeli kibbutz founded by his grandparents. The couple and their two kids moved into their home a few weeks before Israel launched a major ground invasion into Gaza to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets that seemed to be getting bigger, faster and more dangerous.
Karen Lee woke in the middle of the night to rattling windows that made her wonder if the explosions were from Hamas rockets hitting their kibbutz or from Israeli missiles slamming into Palestinian homes on the other side of the border. She worried incessantly about the possibility that she might have to use her body to protect one of her two children—a modern-day Sophie’s choice she wasn’t willing to entertain. She never had to make that kind of decision, and living through the short war didn’t transform her into a hard-line “Bomb Them Into the Stone Age” kind of Israeli hawk. It actually cemented Karen Lee’s commitment to trying to come up with realistic alternatives.
“We all fear for our kids, and it makes no sense,” she said of her life on the kibbutz during the war. “It strengthened our belief that this all needs changing.”
Yehuda came to the work as the son of a left-leaning Israeli lawmaker. He was raised to take a stand and defend his point of view. Along with his work with the Geneva Initiative, Yehuda signed up to help moderate Israeli leaders like Tzipi Livni and President Reuven Rivlin as they tried to beat back the conservative political tide that seemed to be saturating Israel. Yehuda is part of a new generation of disillusioned Israelis trying to decide how much of their lives to invest in attempting to soften their country’s edges. Yehuda believed in Israel. He was willing to fight for his country. But if Israelis were going to keep backing hard-line politicians who refused to seriously pursue peace with the Palestinians, Yehuda said he’d be among many that would think seriously about leaving.
“If the majority of Israelis decided that they are going to live on our sword for the next generation, I suspect that some people will say, ‘This is not for me,’” he said. “We want to be here. We think it’s a fantastic project. We think it’s a miraculous project. But we won’t sustain this deterioration.”
The architects face a path cluttered with obstacles. Their attempts to present their plan for dividing Jerusalem as a unified Israeli-Palestinian proposal were undercut because their Palestinian colleagues wouldn’t let their names appear on the report and refused to do media interviews. It made clear what Karen Lee and Yehuda already knew: The idea of dividing Jerusalem is still one of the most contentious issues in the conflict. And being linked to a plan that cedes Palestinian land could be seen as traitorous to some.
“People Are Not Lego”
Among the critics is Senan Abdelqader, one of the most celebrated modern-day Palestinian architects in the world.
“This is a joke,” Senan said of the Geneva Initiative plans for splitting Jerusalem.
Senan is one of a growing number of Palestinians in Israel who has full citizenship. He carries an Israeli passport that prevents him from traveling to most countries in the Middle East. Senan teaches architecture at Tel Aviv University and works on a variety of projects in Israel. But he eschews the label “Arab-Israeli” and instead refers to himself as “Arab-Palestinian.” Senan sees the modern mapmakers as extensions of a misguided colonial mindset that has for centuries repeatedly tried—and failed—to draw stable borders in the Middle East.
“People are not Lego,” he said.
Senan doesn’t want to see his city divided. He is among those who would rather see Jerusalem united under some international authority that allows the city to retain its unique character.
“When you think to separate it, you would interrupt its urban net and it would lose its historic character,” said Senan, who doesn’t see architecture as the kind of political tool Karen Lee and Yehuda imagine it to be.
“Architecture is not a solution,” he said, “it’s a concept.”
Senan’s office sits in Beit Safafa, a neighborhood between Jerusalem
and Bethlehem that, like Abu Tor, was split between Israel and Jordan in 1948. Beit Safafa is filled with block upon block of conventional Jerusalem stone homes and apartment buildings that give the neighborhood little to distinguish it from other parts of the city. Senan’s unusual four-story building is one of the architect’s subtle protests against Israel’s inequitable development policies. The outer frame is made to look like a traditional Arabic latticed room separator known as a mashrabiya. The gray stone walls are cut with small holes that create a feeling of openness and intimacy that still provides some privacy for the people living and working inside. The stone mashrabiya acts to keep the inside cool while serving as a shell protecting those living inside.
Senan’s mashrabiya is not only infused with modern and traditional Middle Eastern ideas, it was designed in quiet opposition to discriminatory Israeli construction policies that constrain Palestinian development. The outer stone façade conforms to restrictive Israeli construction rules and envelops the actual living area like a box. Three of four yards separate the external shell from the contemporary glass-walled house on the inside, which serves as Senan’s home and office.
Senan’s criticism of his Israeli counterparts’ plans touched a nerve for Yehuda, who chafed at being compared to the British colonialists who carved up the Middle East.
“Everybody tries to divide us, it’s true,” Yehuda said. “Some people won’t like it. But in the greater picture, this is probably the only way to get some kind of agreement, some kind of peace. It’s not pretty. I would prefer not to have to divide the city. We’re not in love with this concept of division, but it’s a necessity.”
Popular support for the idea rises and falls, depending on the political climate. Stalemates often give rise to talk of a “one-state” solution where Israel would officially annex all of the West Bank and give the Palestinians living there full rights and citizenship.
Palestinians sometimes float the idea as a threat, knowing full well that most Jewish-Israelis would reject the idea of absorbing more than 2 million Palestinians, a move that would more than double the size of the country’s minority population and stoke Israeli fears that its 6 million Jewish citizens could one day become a minority in a country established as a modern-day homeland for the Jewish people.
“The spirit of an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians—its DNA—is separation and, in Jerusalem, it’s more obvious than anywhere else,” Yehuda said. “There are two cities here. There’s a clear line between them. Now, sometimes the line is within an urban fabric—like Abu Tor—but also, there, the line is very clear. You know immediately when you pass from a Jewish street to an Arab street. You feel it immediately. Not only in the language, but in the space, in the air. It’s a different environment, and this is the most complicated place.”
Yehuda sees himself as a political realist and views critics like Senan as naysayers still holding onto some unattainable, idealistic peace plan.
“I think some Palestinians, for some reason, I don’t know why, they have this romantic view of what Jerusalem needs to be,” Yehuda said. “They haven’t decided what they want. Do they want hard Palestinian nationality? Are you connected to reality? Because you have to choose. If you want Palestinian nationality, that means making hard choices about cutting Jerusalem in half. It means having to swallow living side-by-side with Israelis, but taking responsibility for your own people.”
It is up to Palestinians to bite the bullet, accept their decades of losses and agree to a less-than-ideal compromise, he said.
“Do you want this, or do you want to sit in a colonized place and whine that Israelis are colonizers?” he asked. “I find a lot of Palestinians really haven’t made that decision.”
Yehuda finds the skepticism of people like Senan, whose career and success are intertwined with Israel, to be especially ironic. Senan teaches architecture at Tel Aviv University and at Jerusalem’s more funky, alternative Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He works on projects with the Israeli government, often in the country’s Arab communities.
“Senan lives on the Israeli fabric,” said Yehuda, who wondered what the alternative—the realistic alternative—is to dividing the city.
“What? What do you offer?” Yehuda asked of the critics. “What’s your proposal? This place is going for division. It’s not going anywhere else.”
There’s no realistic scenario Yehuda can see in the short term that would lead to the dream of an undivided Jerusalem that is the capital of both Israel and Palestine.
“I don’t understand that, not on the architectural-planning level and not on the cultural-societal level,” he said. “There’s no level on which Jerusalem exists as one, no level besides the Jerusalem of the heavens. I understand it’s frustrating. I understand it’s frightening. I understand it will change realities in ways people can’t understand. It’s emotional, but laying on this false sentiment of a united Jerusalem, it sounds like Netanyahu saying that Jerusalem is united and will never be divided, so the extreme right and the extreme left meet on their backs.”
“Divide What? It’s Not a Cake”
The prospect of being part of a new Palestinian state puts the families on the eastern side of Assael in a quandary. No one would dispute that becoming part of any new nation is going to be fraught with risk and uncertainty. And a new Palestinian nation, if it ever becomes a reality, will face more challenges than most new states. For now, the opportunities for Palestinians living in Jerusalem are much better than those living in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
The route of the proposed dividing line matters less to the families on the western side of Assael Street than those on the eastern side. The big concern for the Joudans, the Maeir-Epsteins and the Bezalelys is whether they might someday find themselves living on the edge of Israel, as the families here did when the nation was first created. The families on the other side of the street—the Bazlamits, the Risheks, the Salhabs—would have to decide whether they wanted to give up their Israeli passports and ID cards to live their lives on the outer edge of Palestine.
While most of the people on the eastern side of the street want to see a Palestinian state, not everyone wants to live in it. Many people simply avoid answering the question when asked which country they would want to live in, given the choice.
When asked in various polls, Arab East Jerusalemites have been split on the issue. In one 2011 survey, 35 percent said they would choose Israeli citizenship if given the choice between living in Israel and a new Palestinian state. Another 35 percent wouldn’t answer the question. Thirty percent said they wanted to be citizens of Palestine.1
The possibility that leaders like Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas could ever oversee security, electricity, garbage collection and water on the lower half of Assael Street seems improbable to many who live here.
“It’s a dream,” said Moussa Salhab, the Assael father embittered by years of fighting losing battles with Israeli bureaucrats over who owned the gardens outside his front door. “Who will come here? Abbas? It will never happen.”
Maha Salhab, Moussa’s daughter, doesn’t want to see Jerusalem split again. Maha is among the young, hijab-wearing Palestinians in Jerusalem who benefit from life under Israeli rule, even if she sometimes has to deal with terrifying threats from young Jewish punks trying to intimidate her when she goes out in West Jerusalem.
“Divide what?” she said of her hometown. “It’s not a cake.”
There’s little reason to carve up a city that is already fragmented by Israel’s concrete separation walls and security fences, said Maha.
“It’s only a little city,” she said. “It’s nothing on the map. We’re not talking about Chicago. It’s Jerusalem. It’s like dividing your own house. You’re already surrounded. You already have a wall, so what are you going to divide? Another wall? It’s like having a door—and another door.”<
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Right next door, Imm Fadi has no intention of giving up her Israeli passport. If her home were to become the edge of Palestine, she would almost certainly move into Israel, even though it would leave family members on the other side. Imm Fadi may not support the same right-wing Israeli leaders as her late husband anymore, but she still sees the benefits of being an Israeli citizen. Palestinians and Arab-Israelis may be second-class citizens in Israel, but corruption in the new Palestinian government would be intolerable.
“I will not have a chance to be a first-class citizen in Palestine because I don’t have connections,” Imm Fadi said. “In Palestine I wouldn’t even be a tenth-class citizen. Here, I am second class. Second-class citizenship is better than tenth-class citizenship.”
Her son Fadi disagrees. After being raised by a father who vehemently opposed the idea, Fadi said he now supports a two-state solution.
“I want a Palestinian state,” Fadi said one afternoon in his mother’s living room.
Imm Fadi scoffed at her son’s views and reminded him of the inefficiency and corruption of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, which relies on international aid to keep it from collapsing.
“They went to Ramallah,” she asked Fadi. “Did they do anything?”
“The economy in Ramallah is good,” he replied.
Imm Fadi wanted no part of it.
“Only those that work in the Palestinian Authority become rich,” she said. “All others are poor.”
She reminded her oldest son that his family is intimately intertwined with Israel.
“We studied in Israel,” she said. “We complement them and they complement us. The people from the West Bank, if they were to be given a chance to come back under Israeli occupation, they would love it.”
When Fadi left the room, Imm Fadi said her son was delusional.
“Fadi is a liar,” she said. “He cannot live in a Palestinian state. Fadi’s heart gets ahead of him. My other kids wouldn’t live in the Palestinian Authority. They studied in Israel. We work here.”
A Street Divided: Stories From Jerusalem’s Alley of God Page 28
