The building featured in the picture, standing/collapsing in the Arab-Jewish city of Ramla, is what remains of a magnificent mansion built at the beginning of the 18th century, during the Ottoman rule of the Land of Israel/Palestine. The Palestinian Abu al-Huda family, one of the wealthiest families in Ramla, built the house to reside in, and planted a large garden by its side. The style of the building was characteristic of the Muslim architecture of the time: a dome on the roof with a crescent-shaped ornament, colorful sandstones, Moorish arches and Ablaq decorations and pendants. Nowadays, the building remains standing, desolate and destroyed, in the heart of a parking lot, slowly crumbling back into the sand soil after which Ramla was named (R’mel, رمل, in Arabic = sand) in the era of the Arab rule during the early eighth century. Piles of trash from the adjacent shops and workshops are accumulating around it, a stench and swarms of flies encircle it. On one side of the structure, the authorities have placed a sign forbidding the dumping of trash, while on the other side they’ve placed two huge garbage containers. But the pile of trash just keeps growing every year. The large garden which used to spread out to the east of the house, and additional buildings which stood to its west, were flattened long ago. The property is currently used as a parking lot, which as a loyal agent of this renowned and revenue-generating municipal practice ensures that the public space isn’t utilized, awaiting in submission for the day when real estate prices in the area rise and the disintegrating Ottoman palace is transformed back into sand and dust. Then, it will reunite with them and become ruined wasteland ready for “urban renewal”.
This requires nothing but time. Structures such as these are subject to flimsy conservation laws, and are not protected by any law apart from the law that prohibits them from being torn down. On the other hand, they are protected by another law – the Absentee Property Law which was legislated in 1950 and permits the country to temporarily confiscate all properties of people that left their homes during the 1948 war and moved to enemy countries (in other words, Arab countries). Given that the Israeli army captured the city of Ramla in July 1948, and its Arab residents were ordered to vacate it, the land belonging to the Abu al-Huda family remained abandoned and was reassigned to the possession of the government housing company, Amidar (”My nation resides” in Hebrew – is there any point in asking which nation they mean?), which promotes its own aspirations regarding the land. Meanwhile, the building has mainly been obeying the natural law of destruction. Its Ottoman past hasn’t been helpful – on the contrary. And it’s not like we don’t preserve ancient ruins in Israel. As a matter of fact, remnants of sinking civilizations, such as the Roman and Byzantine, and even the Mamluk and Abbasid empires, not to mention the Biblical era, are well preserved and supervised, and hefty sums are collected upon entry to these places in order to cover their maintenance expenses. Dozens of Ottoman remains related to the history of Zionism undergo meticulous conservation processes, however ruins such as this, the kind that serve as a testament of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are less popular amongst the authorities. Even when they are conserved, they are not turned into museums and heritage centers and do not maintain their original nature – but are rather camouflaged as boutique hotels and shopping centers. But for the most part, they are just left to their own fate. Moreover, they are usually located in cities with large populations of Israeli-Palestinians, which may have a questionable affinity for them. The ancient and binational cities of Lod, Ramla, Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, Beer Sheva, are dotted with such buildings, almost like isolated historical punctuation marks in the heart of the flattened narrative of progress surrounding them.
Yet, sometimes the earth itself loses its patience and rebels against the political borders and human ventures. The large earthquake that occurred in 1927 throughout the Middle East destroyed many residential buildings in the area, including in the cities of Ramla and Lod, destabilizing their urban fabric. At that time, the British mandate in Palestine cleverly exploited this event in order to neglect the dense and semi-destructed residential area for the following twenty years, thus completing the course of flattening and expanding of the Holy Land into a region that aligns with the Orientalist vision of a “pristine ancient landscape”. The recent earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey is perhaps a reminder of the eruption of that geological rage. But it seems that we have learned nothing. Even today local governments are still eager –under the auspices of natural disasters and threats of war – to promote far-fetched construction ventures, which respond first and foremost to financial interests. Do those concrete monstrosities with their solid foundations actually meet the life challenges of our disloyal land?
In the northern neighborhood of Tel-Aviv where I live, every few days another building designated for urban renewal is destroyed. Even during the last three years – when it seemed that the world stood still – the bustle of destruction and construction did not cease. While the ones lucky enough to have a standing house stayed indoors, it seemed like only the construction workers – Palestinians from the West Bank, possibly descendants of those who were expelled from Ramla and Lod in 1948 – could be seen on the streets, in their dirty clothes, faces covered in plaster dust, building homes for the other nation during the day, and at night – due to the lockdowns (pandemic lockdowns, border lockdowns) sleeping between their half-walls. The specter of the houses being constantly torn down in unrecognized Arab villages haunts the scaffoldings. Tel-Aviv was also built on sand – however, unlike the Ottoman ruin in Ramla, which clings to the earth, Tel-Aviv’s buildings repeatedly collapse and are rebuilt, filling the air with haze of sand and dust before reemerging from their ash as luxurious bunkers adorned with concrete gardens.
We’ve been conducting our lives within this political, financial and social smog for years now, the smog which is our zeitgeist. If only it would disperse a bit, perhaps we could see through it the terrified face of Walter Benjamin´s angel of history, with his back to the ruined Ramla and his face towards Tel-Aviv of the future.
This text was first published on the website: LCB diplomatique
Translation from Hebrew: Sharon Gesthalter