One Arab World

I have taken a tip from a new friend (check out his site at orientalismegypt.blogspot.com) and have decided to throw in excerpts of my masters' thesis in architecture to cover up some writers block. My thesis was "A Seventy Five Year Urban Peace Plan for the Status of Jerusalem." Grand aye. Through it I hoped to document a real solution for the issue of Jerusalem (arguably the most enigmatic of the many problems found in the Middle East fiasco) so that in a fantastic circumstance of peace the idea would be there on a shelf ready to go.

I had big names on my committee including renowned architect Moshe Safdie (who stubbornly refused to sign, but we did have some fabulous arguments) and its been viewed by some interesting people such as Michael Terazi (Harvard Law graduate and chief advisor on litigation to the Negotiations Department of the PLO) Accompanying the thesis was a 25 minute documentary on the history, issues, and solution to Jerusalem that I need to find a way to make available online (I have a mini-div copy if anyone has a decent solution). Please forgive some of the outdated material; it is three years old, and my rambling.

Architecture is the quintessential representation of a civilization. Style and types readily identify their origins; pyramids are Egyptian, skyscrapers are American, gothic is Christian and so forth. Architecture is also a luxury. We architects are not the master builders of centuries past, and homes now come ready made. No, we are required only when the basic needs of the people are met. This is why civilizations are judged by their architecture. The architecture is the civilization's pinnacle and is attained only after everything else is sustained. True architecture is proof of our greatness and of our sheer existence. Like planting trees, we must also leave our buildings for newer generations; it is our responsibility as architects. 

As architecture shines for tomorrow, it is politics that moves today. Politicians cumulatively determine our lives and its course. Everything from the most mundane traffic law to whether or not we will be sent of to war to die. Most important, though, it is our politics that will determine whether or not we will be remembered and why. And if we do manage to achieve greatness through our politics it will fall on the architects to represent us.

The question of Palestine is a difficult one. The initial United Nations partition of the land of Palestine called for the segmentation of the land into a Jewish state and an Arab one. The Jewish state successfully developed into the nation of Israel. The Palestinian one has been in limbo since. Three main obstacles face the development of a Palestinian nation and subsequently a lasting peace in the region. The "right of return" (the right of the Palestinians that fled the fighting in 1949 and their descendants to return to their homeland), and establishment of the borders of the Palestinian state (calling for the relocation of many Israeli settlements from within the confines of the West Bank and Gaza into Israel proper) are the first two. The third and most controversial is the status of the city of Jerusalem. Throughout all the peace initiatives this has been the largest obstacle as the other two have more closely reached a satisfactory state of compromise (with Israel consenting to a marginal number of returned refugees with due compensation and the resubmission of nearly 94% of the occupied lands).

The status of Jerusalem has not been as well addressed because of the lack of foresight by the United Nations to designate it in its initial solution. Defining it as an international city giving no party control was the source of most of the turmoil. Jerusalem is claimed by both parties to be its respective capital. Combined with its historical and religious importance to all factions involved, the current status of Jerusalem is likely to fail. Jerusalem is the source of the problem, and I hope to offer a solution that would be deemed satisfactory by both parties.  As architecture dictates spatial arrangements and politics determines positioning I feel this particular problem could never succeed without the full and equal incorporation of the two.

Karim Elsahy

I am no movie critic, but there is something about the movie Kingdom of Heaven I would like to discuss. You see I am an architect, and a central theme and moral underwritten throughout the film is one I realized in building. Not any building, but some… the important ones. There is philosophy I believe in that states that we as architects build nothing. We design space, but space is nothing; a void. How can you design nothing and get paid for it.

Practically speaking we define the enclosure; the housing…fine. Then in essence the facility itself was already there. As soon as the important people that make decisions got together and decided "We will have a museum at 5^th and 38^th" and the masses concurred, we had a museum. The only thing left to do was shelter and define it. That is the meaning of the soul of a building; its essence, its function. Nowhere is this more evident than in a religious building, particularly I find, in a mosque. In a mosque the structure itself is perpetually limited, but that doesn't matter. The mosque is not bound by the lines the zoning comities draw - or the property line on which it stands. A mosques boundary is defined by the extent into the street or garden the latest person to arrive is praying; constantly in flux. As long as we all agree upon this space being a mosque, it is. The structure is irrelevant. With this theme I return to the movie.

The film, about the crusaders second attempt of Jerusalem, ends with the hero Christian protector of Jerusalem (Orlando Bloom) dealing terms of surrender to Sallah El Din. When they come to terms as they are parting ways when the knight asks Sallah El Din "What does Jerusalem mean to you?" the reply was "Nothing….Everything"…Perfect! Talk of the religious layering of Jerusalem, Muslim on top of Christian on top of Jewish could have given way to the most beautiful of symbolic metaphors; the mesh of it all! Instead we have returned dangerously close to idolatry, each wilding his sign, his crescent or his star, protecting his symbol (when they are nothing but rocks, irrelevant, old, and crumbling) and condemning all else to hell. It is called the holy LAND people.

Karim Elsahy