Kolektiv X

1. Program Valuation and Reformulation

Rather than developping planning instruments for Ein Hud that could be applied afterwards to the whole territory, we had developped instruments for the whole territory that can be used for Ein Hud.
We could sum up this approach as following:

- Build a country with the notion of territorial continuum. Allow Israel and Palestine to set up as countries “same as the others”, while the first is endangered by a permanent insecurity and the latter, divided up by the first one, isn’t able to gather in a territory.
- Build it with the time dimension. First off dividing, then distribut ing, and at last, protecting.

The problems delimited to Ein Hud cover the whole territory of two nations which aren’t yet two countries, of two nations on only one territory neutralized by the expansion determination of one side and the claiming reaction of the other side.
The assertion of two independant states and their cohabitation appear to be a solution to the current conflict, a necessary but insufficient solution.
In that perspective, it is the general problem of the Israeli-Palestinian territory that we had tried to formulate. This could be summed up by two main issues: how to create two countries (Palestine and Israel), and how, within these two areas, make two populations (Jews and Arabs) live next to each other?

2. State of play

The current situation of the Israeli-Palestinian territory is partly inherited from the leading principles to the construction of an Israeli state. The latter doesn’t delimit itself into any territorial borders. As a colonizing nation, Israel is perpetually expanding. This creates indeed a problem in the constitution of a Palestinian state, as it is continuously endangered by the israelian expansion. Therefore, it appears that the conflictory situation between the two nations is largely the consequence of the lack of agreed Israelian borders. The Zionist idea of a territory for the “People with No Land” prevents Israel from becoming a country, from being clearly delimited.

This constitution of an Israelian state has also engendered a fragmented territory. The israelian occupation strategy was developped on the West Bank crests, hence dominating the palestinian villages, forcing the palestinian enclaves to climb up the hills little by little. We find on both sides of the border an archipelagic organisation linked to an important topography.

To this past history are added up the several traces and marks left by the history of politics. We will retain three of them:
The Green Line (the armistice line) of 1949, the Separation Barrier (built, and some projected parts) and the Gaza Disengagement Plan.

These territorial and political situations give birth to a first instrument. It uses this state of play as a view of the problem and doesn’t try to alter it, but to organize it, order it and hence make it viable.

3. Proposition

Creating two countries

On the macroterritorial scale, our project is about creating, inscribing and qualifying a border. A border defined by two devices: a WALL as a legal and physical vertical fence and a VOID as an horizontal barrier. In case of conflict, it’s the void size that ensures the power of a border. In the Palestinian-Israeli case, we hypothesize that it is the width of the border that is problematic.
In the framework of a qualification of a border between Israel and Palestine, we therefore suggest the creation of a STRATEGIC VOID acting as the separating space.

Making two populations live together on a same ETENDUE

An other scale SE SUPERPOSE to this macro-territorial one: the scale of the micro-conflicts that are created consequently to the enclaves, and existing both on the Israeli and Palestinian sides. On the Palestinian side they are the unrecognized Arab villages that didn’t leave their land after the colonization. On the Israeli side, they are the Jewish settlements. On both sides, these enclaves have common settings within topography. The Arab villages are pushed by the Israelis up on the hills and the jewish colonies are strategically set up in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip on points from where they can watch the whole territory: the crests lines.

On the micro-conflicts scale, we also refer to a logic of the void. It is not anymore defined in plan or maps, but in section. The zone defined as a void matches an altitude. This logic of the section voids is teamed up with the creation of passages (tunels and bridges) that allow to link autonomously the enclaves to each other on definite places.

Therefore, the project has two scales, each one corresponding to a specified problem.
It’s about creating two countries by the creation of a border become thick thanks to an internal void, and allowing the two countries to make two different populations cohabit within them, through the creation of local borders which settings are defined by altitude.

Qualifying the border

In the memory-invention process, the border-space content between the Green Line and the security fence is worthy of bringing a new meaning in the collective historical conciousness.
Because of its spatial particularity ( it is a spread border), the latter territory cannot be given back to any of the two parts in conflict. The international law must at last achieve to establish authoritative and power relations in this Middle- East region, as it has been trying to do since 1947.

Considering the landscape layout of the bordering line would be a way to mark the present times as already belonging to a past about to discover a new future.

4. Instrument: the border as a void thought in section

For this project, we have used on the territory an instrument already tested: the void and the border. However, it appeared that this instrument would loose some of its relevancy if used only on a surface. The Israeli-Palestinian territory isn’t only bipolarized, although it can be divided in two parts on a plan. It is the micro-scale, the enclaves’ one, that brings up to date the notions of voids and borders. The spreading of palestinian entities on the israelian territory, and vice-versa, make us think of another dimension: the altitude’s. This dimension directly corresponds to the specific topography of the studied territory. A new planing instrument comes out of this : the border thought in section.

5. Project: the border as a limit to law exercise.

4 distinct territories are identified:

- Israel: extended up to the limits once defined in 1949. Inside, Palestinian villages are ruled by the Israeli laws but keep their own rights concerning their urban development. In between Israel’s and Palestine’s zones a non-built stratum preserves the different settlements, setting up landscape voids that reinforce the construction of territorial aesthetics. The Palestinians are allowed to use the Israeli roads network.

- Palestine: it is spreading on the West Bank excepted the area between the security wall and the Green Line. There, the Israelian colonies stay on their spots just like their symmetric Palestinian enclosures; like them they keep their own preserved development area above an empty landscape stratum. The colonists have to use the Palestinian roads network.

- The Border: it is settled from the wall in progress to the Green Line. Its thickness consists of a preserved space, where the historical landscape seen as an evident palimpsest, will be enhanced and still be crossed by the existing roads networks. The Old Jerusalem, part of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, are included in the border landscape that would entirely be proposed as a World Heritage feature.