Vanishing Walaja: Changing Landscape in South Jerusalem - Britt Baillie

Vanishing Walaja: Changing Landscape in South Jerusalem Britt Baillie

Conflict in Cities: Europe and the Middle East

The lush green farming villages of the ‘breadbasket of Jerusalem’ are linked to the city via the contested Refaim Valley. The springs of this valley, which are the source of its agricultural fecundity, have attracted farmers since 4000 BCE resulting in a ‘sculpted’, bucolic, terraced landscape which has been put forward as a potential future UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1948, the Green Line divided the valley, cutting the village of Walaja in two. Today, this environmentally and archaeologically rich landscape, on the edge of Jerusalem, is changing once again. The erection of the separation barrier is excising Walaja from its land, livelihood, and history.

These photographs, taken in September 2010, capture this landscape in transition.

The Ottoman railway line connecting Jerusalem to Jaffa runs at the base of the Refaim Valley. This route and its adjacent road once provided access to Jerusalem’s markets for the local farmers. The positioning of the 1948 Green Line in the Refaim Valley bisected the lands of Walaja.

Its inhabitants were displaced from their village and its farmland. A new village was established by the villagers (seen across the valley) on the property that remained in their possession on the more arid and less fertile east side of the valley. The Jewish National Fund planted a pine forest (seen in the immediate foreground) over the village’s former agricultural lands—radically altering this ‘Biblical agrarian landscape’.

Today, the ruins of Old Walaja are visible from New Walaja.

The old village is used by Israeli Jerusalemites as a much needed recreational green space. A roadblock at the base of the valley coupled with the Israeli closure policy makes this land inaccessible to the villagers of New Walaja and West Bank Palestinians.

Here, the surviving fruit and olive trees go unharvested.

In 2010, the Israel i authorities began constructing the route and security road for the separation barrier. It has cut off Walaja from much of its remaining farmland.

One such excised olive grove can be seen on the right side of the planned route of the wall.

Hundreds of trees are being uprooted in order to make way for the separation barrier. Many more are being lost as they fall on the ‘wrong side’ of the wall. In order to maintain their property rights, Walaja’s farmers have engaged in ‘tactical planting’—claiming their land with their labour.

In the 1970s Walaja’s farmers were enticed to work in the Israeli labour market—lured by lucrative wages. However, Israeli closure policies imposed in the 1990s and 2000s resulted in a renewed dependence on farming.

As their lands, crop sizes and resulting incomes shrink, due to the construction of the wall, villagers are once more forced to seek work outside of the village. With access to Jerusalem restricted, some are only able to find work as labourers in Israeli settlements.

Palestinian farmers do not benefit from the water subsidies provided to their Israeli counter parts. Walaja’s farmers have relied on the area’s rich system of natural springs for hundreds of years.

This Roman nymphaeum was one of the few springs in possession of the villagers after 1948.

The construction of the separation barrier will leave the villagers without access to any of their springs.

The growth of the settlement of Har Gilo (seen in the foreground) has been at the expense of Walaja’s lands (seen in the background). Its positioning has created a barrier between the village and the neighbouring town of Beit Jala. To the north, the expanding settlement of Gilo divides the village from Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem. In 2003, plans to build a new settlement of 14,000 residential units called Givat Yael on the lands of New Walaja were put forward by a private developer.

The location of the settlement at Har Gilo has prompted the Israeli authorities to build a bypass road on the south side of Walaja to connect Har Gilo to Jerusalem. To secure this road, the separation barrier will be built around the entire village of New Walaja. The walled village will only be accessible though a single road access point. At this intersection, the road straight ahead currently accesses the village. However, Walaja does not appear on the road signs, an indication that it has already been discursively erased.

To separate Har Gilo from Walaja a two-sided wall has been built. The Israeli side has been clad in a sandstone façade. The Palestinian side has been left in raw concrete.

The Israeli Society for the Protection of Nature has opposed the construction of the wall in this area— one of the few agricultural landscapes left in the city. However, ‘appropriate’ landscaping has been proposed to minimise the visual disruption of the vistas on the Israeli side where the expropriated land will be designated as recreational parkland.

As Jerusalem expands the ‘open space’ and ‘biblical landscape’ around Walaja is becoming perceived as more valuable and/or worthy of protection. Whilst the settlements rapidly grow in both number and size, Israeli authorities curb the size of Walaja by failing to approve a master plan for the area, providing no services and deeming new buildings ‘illegal’. Many of the structures in Walaja are currently awaiting (a new round of) demolition by the Israeli authorities. The village’s agricultural lands are under threat not only from external pressures and expropriation, but also from internal development that has increased exponentially.

The village of Walaja is being cut out of the fabric of the landscape of Jerusalem and Palestine.

The expropriation of the village’s farmland will create a museified biblical terraced heritagescape.

Israel will gain a newly emptied ‘park ’ stripped of its farmers and contemporary farming. The extent of the lands expropriated since 1948 mean that Walaja will no longer be a sustainable farming community. With the villagers forced to seek work elsewhere, yet cut off from open transport routes, the future of Walaja is uncertain.

Conflict in Cities and the Contested State research project, supported by the ESRC (grant number RES-060-25-0015)

w w w. u r b a n c o n f l i c t s . a r c t . c am . a c. u k

Š Copyright 2011 by Conflict in Cities, All Rights Reserved