LANDSCAPES ARE PEACEBUILDING MECHANISMS

To demonstrate that landscapes are peacebuilding mechanisms and building upon the discussion of the symbolic and cultural importance of the pine and the olive, planting strategies using the pine and the olive were rapidly iterated upon. The sites were chosen from the land use index shown in the previous section, each with a varying condition of wall construction. Strategies tested included creating shared space, deconstructing the physicality or visual dominance of the wall, creating ecologically diverse and rich spaces on both sides of the wall, or using the pine and olive as narrative and teaching tools to tell the stories of collective narratives.

The following set of planting schemes looked to activist groups such as Tent of Nations, Combatants for Peace, the Parents Circle Family Forum, Oasis of Peace/Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, and EcoPeace, as well as Israeli and Palestinian biodiversity reports to see if we could begin healing both the landscape and these two nations simultaneously.

Methods

Attitude and Approach to Design

Needless to say, this is a complex topic to tackle and a polarizing subject for many people at the individual and national levels. There are many different possible approaches, and it will take several tries before landing on one that will serve the communities well. New research on healing and psychosocial pathology highlights communities’ invaluable role in mediating conflicts, aside from relying on the institutional level.26 One of the primary attitudes necessary for this project is to suppress the white saviour complex to avoid Western ethnocentricity that may conduct oppressive post-colonial proposals that would not truly respect the cultural nuances of this region.

Throughout this project, I have look closely at my methods and approaches, and stay selfcritical. I will need to make explicit what is in my control and what is not. Power imbalances exist that make interconnected public space difficult to achieve. But, just as gardens can thrive in seemingly extreme or difficult environmental conditions, so can peace.

Shaping Public Space

Much of the literature regarding sharing space in divided places revolves around urban planning schemes.27 This body of work most often acknowledges that public space parallels the enmity and asymmetrical power dynamics within it. However, there is potential to increase instances of encounters between divided communities and break spatial and cultural barriers. In this regard, the principal starting point is to re-think what ‘space’ is and understand that it is socially and physically grounded.28 Secondly, allowing the irregular, improvisation, and messiness to exist in whatever designed space we propose is critical. A space that allows itself to evolve and change dynamically alongside the urban context is far more complex and offers investigation and happenstance.29 While more urban planning related, Gaffikin, Mceldowney, and Sterrett (2010) present a few key considerations to shaping public space in divided cities. First, to ensure that public space should have qualities of identity and inclusivity that all citizens feel they can use and identify with. Secondly, the designer should see themselves as having a role of influence rather than power or control. Thirdly, consider the design strategies that inadvertently encourage surveillance, such as ‘overlooking’ and creating distinct edges to space and borders.30

Education: Storytelling Over Textbooks

In post-war or active-war landscapes, education is a primary practice that influences public discourse and develops individual or societal perceptions and beliefs. However, history textbooks focus on times of war and suffering, painting someone as the enemy and someone as the ally. They tell a curated story of events, choosing which perspectives are shared and which are silenced. Education is essential, especially as more and more people worldwide deny the events of the Holocaust or believe that the separation barrier is simply a security measure and nothing more. The reading and writing of history are especially challenging in a context such as Israel and Palestine where numerous viewpoints and collective narratives are disputed and contradictory. History education should prioritize acknowledging memory and long-lasting trauma to prevent continued aggression and hostility.31 This may involve teaching “acknowledgment, truth-telling, apology, repair, and democratization” and “recognize the victims of violence and repression, as well as their suffering and need for justice.”32 Israel and Palestinian co-founders of the Shared History Project, Sami Adwan and Dan Bar-On, offered a space for both sides’ narratives to be presented and shared. It is the goal of the Shared History Project to bridge narratives and communities.33 While I am not proposing the creation of a new textbook, it is imperative that through the design of a proposal, physical space emerges that educates visitors on the narrative of the other. As mentioned, dialogue and space to tell stories are two way to educate. However, education is a larger theme that should be explored through landscape intervention. To do this, time must be dedicated to collecting first-hand accounts and the understanding of both side’s recollections of history. This has partially been achieved through the process of writing this proposal, but more work is to be done in collecting a database of narratives.

Conclusion

This project recognizes the emerging literature and existing body of work and methods contributing to studies on conflict and spatial relationships. Several questions regarding active conflict and creating spaces of peace still remain to be addressed because previous studies have almost exclusively focused on post-war landscapes, memorialization/commemoration of a past event, or active-war fighting. Other pieces to the puzzle concerning memory, storytelling, dialogue and narratives are disjointed in the body of literature surrounding this context. A new approach is therefore needed to pull these tenets together to share stories and bring empathy to the forefront.

Endnotes

1. Some of the scholarship involving the relationship between war and landscapes includes Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel (2016), Braverman (2008), Helphand (2006), Mostafavi (2017), and Pearson (2012).

2. Fionn Byrne, “Verdant Persuasion: The Use of Landscape as a Warfighting Tool During Operation Enduring Freedom,” Journal of Architectural Education 76, no. 1 (2022), 37-38.

3. Byrne, “Verdant Persuasion,” 39.

4. Byrne, 43.

5. Gary Fields, “Landscaping Palestine: Reflections of Enclosure in a Historical Mirror,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 1 (2010), 64.

6. Fields, “Landscaping Palestine,” 75.

7. Ella Ben Hagai, Phillip L. Hammack, Andrew Pilecki, and Carissa Aresta. “Shifting Away from a Monolithic Narrative on Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans in Conversation,” Peace and Conflict 19, no. 3 (2013), 298.

8. Silvia Hassouna, “Spaces for Dialogue in a Segregated Landscape: A Study on the Current Joint Efforts for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1, 2016, 58.

9. Hassouna, “Spaces for Dialogue in a Segregated Landscape,” 59-60.

10. Hassouna, 61.

11. Hassouna, 60.

12. Such tales of epiphanies include that of Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin. Their stories are ever-so-poetically detailed in Apeirogon, A Novel (2020) by Colum McCann, a book that has greatly inspired this project. Additionally, similar themes are highlighted in Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour (2019) by Yossi Klein Halevi, I Saw Ramallah (2003) by Mourid Barghouti, and in the work of Peace Heroes, Just Vision, Ali Abu Awwad, and more.

13. Hassouna, 63.

14. Some written works that discuss memorialization and commemoration strategies include Pirker, Rode and Lichtenwagner (2019), Stevens and Franck (2016), Stevens (2013), Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel (2016), and Mohammad (2017).

15. Anita Bakshi, “Modes of Engagement” in Topographies of Memories: A New Poetics of Commemoration. Secaucus; New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2017), 213.

16. Anita Bakshi, “Introduction” in Topographies of Memories: A New Poetics of Commemoration. Secaucus; New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2017), 12.

17. Bakshi, “Modes of Engagement,” 237.

18. Bakshi, “Modes of Engagement,” .

19. Anita Bakshi, “Chapter 7: Materializing Metaphor” in Topographies of Memories: A New Poetics of Commemoration, Secaucus; New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2017), 272-275.

20. Bakshi, “Materializing Metaphor,” 281.

21. Anne Whiston Spirn, “A Rose is Rarely Just a Rose: Poetics of Landscape” in The Language of Landscape, New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press (1998), 216.

22. Whiston Spirn, “A Rose is Rarely Just a Rose: Poetics of Landscape,” 216-217.

23. Bakshi, “Modes of Engagement,” 237.

24. Annika Björkdahl, “Urban Peacebuilding,” Peacebuilding 1, no. 2 (2013): 208.

25. Björkdahl, “Urban Peacebuilding,” 211.

26. David Senesh, “Restorative Moments: From First Nations People in Canada to Conflicts in an Israeli–Palestinian Dialogue Group,” In Peacebuilding, Memory and Reconciliation, edited by Charbonneau, Bruno and Genevieve Parent, Routledge, 2012, 163.

27. The literature surrounding shared public space in divided contexts include Björkdahl (2013), Bollins (2021), Brand-Jacobsen and Frithjof (2009), Calame and Charlesworth (2011), Gaffikin, Mceldowney, and Sterrett (2010), and more.

28. Frank Gaffikin, Malachy Mceldowney, and Ken Sterrett, “Creating Shared Public Space in the Contested City: The Role of Urban Design,” Journal of Urban Design 15, no. 4 (2010): 497.

29. Gaffikin, Mceldowney, and Sterrett, “Creating Shared Public Space in the Contested City,” 498.

30. Gaffikin, Mceldowney, and Sterrett, 499-500.

31. Karina V. Korostelina, “Can history heal trauma? The role of history education in reconciliation processes,” in Peacebuilding, Memory and Reconciliation, edited by Charbonneau, Bruno and Genevieve Parent, Routledge, 2012, 196.

32. Korostelina, “Can history heal trauma?,” 197.

33. Korostelina, 202.