Tareq Shakhshir, year 3, 2021 by AA School

“Home, House, and Land: The Cage House” Student: Tareq Shakhshir Tutor: Mercedes Rodrigo History & Theory Essay Architectectural Association Third Year Term Two 2020-21

Tel Rumeida Settlement is an example of the many settlements in the West Bank. It surrounds the home of the palestinian family of Abu Eisheh. They are forced to protect every window and every entrance with steel nets. The house is known as the “cage house” as it resembles a cage.1 The house itself is a small cubicle form containing 2 storeys with a main entrance and a back entrance and at least 5 windows. The building material is a combination of stone and sand-dried brick. The settlement is placed in a relatively rural area in which most structures use sun-dried brick, as opposed to stone that is more commonly used in the city centers.2 The cage is made of steel which is drilled on the exterior of all the windows and porches of the entrances.3 After israeli settlers arrived in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Tel Rumeida, Hebron in 1983, restrictions on residents were imposed gradually. First, the army enforced numbering of the vehicles of the Palestinian residents to let them through surrounding roads such as Jabar Al-Rahmeh street. The soldiers would often conveniently not recognize the vehicle numbers and prevent the family from entering. Eventually, cars were completely restricted access and all visitors needed permission. Furthermore, repairing items in the house became extremely difficult. Several of the family children have also died as a result of ambulances that used to arrive within a few minutes that now took 1-5 hours. The first time the ambulance was delayed, the family were forced to walk to the hospital after undergoing childbirth and the baby passed away on the way. The second time, the wife was pregnant with twins and the family made sure to discuss the matter with the administration beforehand in order to prepare to avoid a similar tragedy. Yet, the ambulance still arrived an hour and half after the wife had gone into labor and unfortunately only one of the twins had survived. Furthermore, lethal attacks from many settlers became a frequent occurrence in which the family was forced to hide on the roof. Settlers would break the windows with rocks and vandalize their cars while the family was sleeping. The family put up a fence, which needed to be replaced several times after settlers cut through it. “Shalom Alkobi” is one of the settlers who broke into the home and attacked “Tayseer” (a family member) and the rest of the family who were able to defend themselves with mere household objects. The family hid on the roof for their own safety as the police did not arrive till the next morning. This was the only occurrence in which the family had enough evidence to find Alkolbi guilty and even then he was only given a lenient sentence of five months of social service in a hospital.4

“Cage House” Diagram

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has reached well over 50 years with settlements constantly multiplying increasingly. The homely attachment to a piece of land can become a powerful driving force in a world of war crime.5

1 2 3 4 5

“Abu Eisheh Family.” Abu Eisheh family - Mapping Hebron’s Apartheid Moxnes, Halvor (1997). Constructing early Christian families: family as social reality and metaphor. “Abu Eisheh Family” “Abu Eisheh Family” Avner Falk, Fratricide in the Holy Land: A Psychoanalytic View of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, Chapter 1, page 8

The control imposed on the “cage house” and its occupants provides evidence of the way in which “house” can be differentiated from the term “home”. The residents’ experiences have the ability to change the interpretation of an object or in this case a structure that is meant to sustain people's lives. It can be assumed that the israeli government views the structure as “house” or rather one of many pawns as an obstacle in a military strategy on the scale of a map in a war that is essentially over the claim of the “Homeland”. “Home” on the other hand implies land that becomes a construction for sustenance. The residents are forced to live in conditions that demonstrate how a “house” can influence their sustenance of “home”. Hence this essay will explore how the simple terms of “Home”, “House”, and “Land” and their correlation with each other have the ability to shape contours of conflict and are used as strategies to consequently potentially decide its outcomes. is it the case

At the smallest scale of the house unity the first strategy correlates the terms “home” House” [home—house]. The “cage house” is essentially “Home” to the Abu Eisheh family. The house is monitored by watch posts. This is interesting as it expresses many similarities to the concept of the “Panopticon”. The main principle that is intended with the Panopticon is central inspection. The French philosopher Michel Foucault meant for the panopticon to be used in typologies of disciplinary societies.6 The system allows authority to dominate its inhabitants and so the system is most commonly used in prisons. In terms of its architecture, he describes the prisoner of a panopticon as being “at the receiving end of asymmetrical surveillance”.7 It enables the watchman to view and stalk the people in captivity without them knowing whether or not they are being watched and so they assume that they are always under observation. This results in the inmates behaving in a disciplined way as they live in fear of punishment. The layout of the panopticon is as follows; the watch tower is in the center with the cells surrounding it. In the central tower is the watchman and in the cells are prisoners. The tower shines bright light into the cells so the watchman is able to see the inmate while inhibiting the inmate's vision of the watchman.8 In relation to the Palestinians, certain similarities can be identified. The checkpoint meters away from the house consist of a container equipped with a control room and metal detector, and a watch point on the top of the roof observing the residents at all times. All elements contain surveillance cameras and are secured by a metal net giving the whole structure the impression of a cage.9 Much like the watch tower in the Panopticon, the checkpoint is used to make them feel threatened to the point where they want to leave. The military uses this strategy to continuously make the village feel unhomely which deteriorates the connection that the Palestinians have to the land as they’re exhausted of options that will allow them to live their regular lives. Another interesting object to investigate is the cage itself. The cage and all its qualities are meant to create a dehumanizing effect on its captives. Everything from its transparency and porousness to its materiality is a property of a typology that is meant to be optical and physically controlled. A house as a ‘home’ is always considered a secure and ‘homely’ space of familiarity, family and freedom. ‘Homes’ are essential to human beings fighting against the sense of insecurity.10 11 “Home” to humans is psychological as well as physical. It is reflected in a human’s perception of space in one’s surroundings as well as in architecture. But a home can be unhomely as seen in the example of the cage house.

6 7 8 9 10 11

“Panopticon” Diagram

Watch Tower Diagram “What Does the Panopticon Mean in the Age of Digital Surveillance?” The Guardian “Panopticon…” The Guardian Internalized Authority and the Prison of the Mind: Bentham and Foucault’s Panopticon. “Abu Eisheh Family” Abu Eisheh family - Mapping Hebron’s Apartheid The Architectural Uncanny, Anthony Vidler Anthony Vidler, ‘Unhomely Houses.’

A second strategy can be demonstrated from a further scale that can be understood through a map [house—land]. The “cage house” is located in a village in Hebron. Hebron (AKA Al Khalil) is the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank south of Jerusalum. It hosts around 215,000 Palestinians and 700 jewish settlers.12 The Hebron Protocol (an agreement signed in 1997) divided the city into two sectors: H1, controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and H2, roughly 20% of the city, including 35,000 Palestinians, under Israeli military administration. This map outlines the prohibited freedom of movement and suffocation of the social and economic life for Palestinians residents in this neighbourhood. This political and military strategy is used to expand the Jewish settlements represented by the black markers. The white markers on the other hand represent anything that makes domestic life difficult for palestinians. For example the number 1 white marker represents checkpoint 56 or Hajez Bab A-Zawiya which separates area H1 from H2. The checkpoint is permanently staffed by soldiers and only holders of residential numbers are allowed to pass, which forbids residents even from visits to relatives if they do not live in the area.13 This is an example of the israeli tactics used in the wider ‘points and lines’ strategy identified by Eyal Weizman, an israeli architecture who explores how the government weaponizes urban strategies to their benefit. “Points and lines” are a networked system that overlays a complex matrix of spatial control on the region through nodes not linked by geographic distance but rather reliability, speed, and resources.14 The points represent Israel’s settlements while the lines represent their communication and transport connections. This is used to create ‘wedges’ that open the terrain to further colonisation by enabling larger populations to migrate to the settlements. The points and lines strategy creates a militarily strategic advantage for the protagonist whereby they are afforded a high level of mobility, while enemy movement is severely inhibited.15

12 13 14 15

Neuman, Tamara (2018). Settling Hebron : Jewish Fundamentalism in a Palestinian City “Abu Eisheh Family” Abu Eisheh family - Mapping Hebron’s Apartheid Nikolic, Djordje. “Forensic Architecture.” AlJazeeraEnglish. “Rebel Architecture - The Architecture of Violence.”

Checkpoint 56

Hebron Sector Map

Checkpoint in relation to Cage House and Settlement

Settlement Zoning and Wedges creating fragements in Palestinian Territory

“Nakba”: Palestinian families being expelled from their homes

A third strategy is identified in the analysis of the geneology of the palestinian people and the histiography of the land on which they originated [home—land]. “Home-land” is a term used for a person’s native land. In other words, it is an autonomous or semi-autonomous state in this case occupied by particular people. Those particular people being the palestinians, however, not all palestinians are muslim and not all muslims are arab. The term palestinian is a word used to describe the ethnic identity of those who have historically lived in Palestine and belong to its “homeland”. To understand the importance of the term “Home-land” as a driving force in this war, one must understand the context of the palestinian histiography. Prior to the establishment of the Israeli State after the “Naksa” in 1967, the country was known as Palestine. Back in the 19th century the Ottoman empire ruled over the land where all Palestinians with diverse religious beliefs lived in harmony. As for the Israelites, They resided in european nations at the time in a crucial golden age of nationalism during the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire in which different nations started wanting independence as their own state.16 They wished to settle somewhere to become their own state which was then given the name Zionism. Throughout the years, the land of Palestine was controlled by multiple powers including the British who also viewed its possession as a military tactic of persuasion and promised its control to many nations.17 Eventually, the conflicts interwined with controlling the land of Palestine would soon reveal to not be worth the benefits that the british would recieve from it and so control was essentially handed over to the newly declared United Nations (UN) in 1947 shortly before the “Nakba” (translates to Catastrophe) which marks the drowning of the Palestinian arab state.18 Israelites who had immigrated began evicting palestinian farmers who were living and working there. This would help the jews control land and labor which heightened tensions between the Israelites and the arab Palestinians who were essentially being immobilized and overpowered in their own “homeland”. Shortly after, The UN attempted to form a two state solution splitting the land roughly equally in size. Surely, this solution soon proved to be ineffective and a war broke out between Israel and Palestine. Israel won and occupied much more land. Meanwhile Jordan controlled the West bank and Egypt controlled the Gaza strip. 700,000 Palestinians left to become refugees in surrounding arab nations.19 This victory for the Israelis was the beginning of their nation whereas for the Palestinians it was the “nakba” as they became stateless and essentially “Home”less. Over the years followed continuous acts of war, violence and division. The UN has attempted to interfere and acknowledge both the rights of Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians now live under military occupation and are denied a state on the arabian land in which they originated. On the other hand, to the Israelis this has become their “homeland” as established by the UN and want to protect it. To that point Palestinian carry an apparent domesticity, a family history and nostalgia, however a “homeland” can no longer have homely attributes when somewhere you believe is safe and familiar is exploited.

16 Crashcourse. “Conflict in Israel and Palestine 17 Crashcourse 18 Jazeera, Al. “Timeline - PalestineRemix.” 19 Crashcourse

Land Control Evolution

Closer to today there are now half a million jewish people illegally settling in the west bank after kicking out the original settlers and a quarter of a million in East jerusalem. Pieces of land that legally belong to the palestinians. The israeli argument is that it’s not really illegal because Palestine isn’t officially a state. This becomes a question of legality in war. This is a war structured around the connection of “home” and “land” by destroying homes as opposed to public or symbolic targets and inciting residents to leave the home-land. The principles of the laws of international wars clearly safeguards certain fundamental rights of civilians and states that harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.20 Thus point to a wider injustice for the palestinians who are slowly being eradicated from their “Homeland”

Examples of international laws of war

13 20

Moreno-Ocampo 2006, See section “Allegations concerning War Crimes” Pages 4,5.

Sheep herding community in Humsa

A fourth strategy at the scale of demographics by neighbourhood correlates all three terms [house—land—home]. Israeli construction in the west bank has rapidly sped up within the last 10 years. This can be seen as a strategy that suggests that the separation of land becomes near impossible as more Israeli settlements are established in the West Bank, and as the government plans to “unify” the israelis and the palestinians geographically, the ability to define a Palestinian state in prevented. These planning policies do not only establish spatial but demographic targets. The government aimed to create a seventy:thirty percent jewish to palestinian ratio in Jerusalem by continuing to add settlements into eastern palestinian neighbourhoods. The military and political pressures add to the unity of the two sides however does not address the difference in domestication between them. The demographic targets intend to not only to firmly plough the Israeli presence on the land, but also to prevent the expansion of Palestinian neighbourhoods. This motive was further developed through the use of discriminatory zoning, house evictions and demolitions, as well as the formation of a wall around settlements which segregates the two lifestyles of the city inhabitants. Therefore, rather than unifying, these policies have created a fragmented city that is infiltrated by zones that create hostile internal borders. This strategy allows the settlers to control the West bank’s infrastructure which completely inhibits the Palestinians from receiving equal access to essential services. In a Palestinian town names Nablus for example, water is ‘turned on’ only at certain times throughout the week.21 Not long after, any and all palestinain owned houses in the area were viewed as illegal by the Israelis. They would demolish these homes to make room for their own developments to expand their settlements. They also use these houses in other forms of military strategies such as in the case of the recent suspension of the annexation of the Palestinian “Humsa” Hamlet as part of a deal to normalize relations with surrounding arab nations who would once side with the palestinians. The Israeli Army has demolished 254 structures that it considered illegal in the Jordan Valley in the six months since the annexation plan was suspended, including the homes in Humsa. Israel has designated a military training zone on Humsa and they argue that the herders arrived there at least a decade after the military zone was established in 1972, in the early years of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. The government is forcing the herders to abandon the area, however they say the proposed land is not fit to accommodate their current ways of life through agriculture and herding livestock.22 Not only has this become a measure of occupying land but also destroying modes of life as the herders are not able to sustain themselves as they would usually. Land ploughed and farmed in Humsa

21 22

Jolliffe, Eleanor. “Architecture Is a Weapon in the West Bank.” Kingsley, Patrick, & Adam Rasgon. “Palestinian Hamlet Embodies Fight for West Bank’s Future.” The New York Times

This plot to control land and inhibit modes of life in areas such as Humsa and Hebron demonstrates the political disassociation of the terms of “house”, “land” and “home”. The notion of “home” has been mobilised politically as the “house” is not identified as a place with its own story. Rather it is merely a number that is used for military strategy. Houses as points are all geographical strategies and that geography evolves within the military, whereas home was never so. This begs the inquiry about whether “home” suggests a “land” that a person is familiar with and has deep rooted ties to; “The place your body inhabits is inscribed in your imagination, your unconscious, as a space of possible bliss. Or menace. What if you are forced to abandon your imaginary spatial markings? A torturer wants you, the victim, to regress, because he wants to demean his prey, to make you lose your identity as a subject. Suddenly you have no choice; running away is impossible. The rooms are too small or too big, the ceilings too low or too high. Violence exercised by and through space is spatial torture”.23

In conclusion, “Home”, “House”, and “Land” are powerful terms that prove through the examples of the many case study strategies in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict that their correlation with each other have the ability to shape contours of conflict. The case of the “cage house” is a “House” that can be differentiated from the term “Home”. In the case of “House” and “Land”, points and lines represent the strategy used to eventually eliminate the “houses” to control the “lands” they are built upon. Finally, “Home” and “Land” is representative of a group with political roots that formulate a nationalistic view giving rights to a claim over the “Home-land”. Today there is no officially recognized legal state of Palestine. This suggests that perhaps that israelites are the victors however begs the question of whether the outcome of this conflict determines someone’s loss of a homeland in society.

The prescribed conditions under which Palestinians are forced to live under suggest how simple houses and urban planning around them can influence a person’s experience of life and therefore infiltrate the person's sustenance of what they consider to be “home”.

17 23

Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction.

Bibliography: “Abu Eisheh Family” Abu Eisheh family - Mapping Hebron's Apartheid. Accessed March 28, 2021. https://www.hebronapartheid.org/index.php?family=5. Moxnes, Halvor (1997). Constructing early Christian families: family as social reality and metaphor. CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-203-44049-0. Avner Falk, Fratricide in the Holy Land: A Psychoanalytic View of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, Chapter 1, page 8 “What Does the Panopticon Mean in the Age of Digital Surveillance?” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, July 23, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/23/ panopticon-digital-surveillance-jeremy-bentham#:~:text=Foucault%20used%20the%20panopticon%20as,never%20a%20subject%20in%20communication.%E2%80%9D. Internalized Authority and the Prison of the Mind: Bentham and Foucault's Panopticon. Accessed March 28, 2021. https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/13things/7121.html. The Architectural Uncanny, Anthony Vidler “Anthony Vidler, ‘Unhomely Houses.’” fariahamidzadeh, October 16, 2011. https://fariahamidzadeh.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/anthony-vidler-%E2%80%9Cunhomely-houses%E2%80%9D/. Neuman, Tamara (2018). Settling Hebron : Jewish Fundamentalism in a Palestinian City. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-812-24995-8. Miessen, Markus. “Settlement Archaeology.” Bidoun, October 1, 2005. https://www.bidoun. org/articles/the-wall-settlement-archaeology. AlJazeeraEnglish. “Rebel Architecture - The Architecture of Violence.” YouTube. YouTube, September 2, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybwJaCeeA9o. Nikolic, Djordje. “Forensic Architecture.” Medium. Medium, August 4, 2019. https://medium. com/@dnik181/forensice-architecture-d579c175e1ec. Crashcourse. “Conflict in Israel and Palestine: Crash Course World History 223.” YouTube. YouTube, January 28, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wo2TLlMhiw. Jazeera, Al. “Timeline - PalestineRemix.” Interactive timeline/history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1799 - Palestine Remix. Accessed March 28, 2021. https://interactive.aljazeera. com/aje/palestineremix/timeline_main.html. Moreno-Ocampo 2006, See section "Allegations concerning War Crimes" Pages 4,5. Jolliffe, Eleanor. “Architecture Is a Weapon in the West Bank.” Architectural Review, July 21, 2020. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/architecture-is-a-weapon-in-the-westbank. Kingsley, Patrick, and Adam Rasgon. “Palestinian Hamlet Embodies Fight for the West Bank's Future.” The New York Times. The New York Times, March 20, 2021. https://www.nytimes. com/2021/03/20/world/middleeast/palestinian-hamlet-embodies-fight-for-the-west-banks-future.html. Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. P., 1996.