{"id":2337,"date":"2021-06-27T11:41:23","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T08:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maarav.org.il\/english\/?p=2337"},"modified":"2021-06-28T18:03:45","modified_gmt":"2021-06-28T15:03:45","slug":"archipelago-embarassment-amnon-baror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maarav.org.il\/english\/2021\/06\/27\/archipelago-embarassment-amnon-baror\/","title":{"rendered":"ARCHIPELAGO OF EMBARASSMENT \/ Amnon Baror"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thoughts on preservation in Abu Kabir<\/em><\/p>\n

The historical area at the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv, which has been referred to as \u2018Abu Kabir\u2019 since the 19th century, is a dystopian space, containing many layers and contradictions.<\/p>\n

From the perspective of a preservation architect, it\u2019s hard to understand and make plans for the place within just one narrative and so we must understand it as a non-coincidental collection of unrelated, unaffiliated compounds \u2014 both in relation to the city and in relation to one another. Therefore, I suggest reading the historical space of Abu Kabir as an archipelago of isolated and estranged islands. Each of these compounds is confined and hidden from the eye, as if they wish to be forgotten from memory. Each of these islands is associated with different people and multiple values that form a major part of the community and personal legacy of those invested in the place. <\/em><\/p>\n

An awareness and understanding of this phenomenon emerges from the identification of the space as a \u201cplace of embarrassment\u2019 in which the characteristics of embarrassment are expressed in both tangible and intangible ways.[1]<\/sup><\/a> Each of these isolated islands which makes up the whole archipelago is a \u2018zone of embarrassment\u2019 on its own. Every island, in self-preservation, is surrounded by improvised walls and fences which prevent entry and eyes from the outside peering in. This closed-ness creates a feeling of hostility toward anyone coming from outside.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

With a broader look at the state of Israel, it is clear that the entire country is filled with places where trauma occurred and was then hidden and erased. This created a local infrastructure of embarrassment and concealment which connects to a network of post-traumatic zones of embarrassment. I believe that by recognizing this network, it becomes possible to seek an alternative approach to political, historical, anthropological, artistic, architectural, urban and psychoanalytic analysis of the map of the country.[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The multiplicity of embarrassing zones in Israel enables us to continue to conduct ourselves in the dark, in denial and with an acquired blindness to the spaces around us. This way we can continue to live our lives without troubling moral questions. Keep in mind, however, that erasure and denial are also an attack on thought and that it is an illusion to think that destruction, erasure and concealment can dispel the trauma of its victims.<\/p>\n

Research and documentation of embarrassment[3]<\/sup><\/a> zones allow us to comprehend the complexity of the historical processes, most of which are associated with suffering, pain and injustice. By understanding the changes that have taken place in architecture and local construction, one can try to understand the traumas experienced by those who live in the place. These traumas are constantly denied as a result of the underlying concern around recognizing the Palestinian Nakba. Attempting to understand the places of embarrassment comes from the desire for awareness and correction through expanding consciousness and preserving the contextual cultural heritage.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, the embarrassment zone in Abu Kabir is made up of isolated islands, alienated one from the other, with different, conflicting values and conflicting cultural significance. Each of these islands conducts itself as a closed bubble while constantly ignoring the environment and the adjacent islands that are run themselves just the same.<\/p>\n

In order to comprehend the existing situation, one must know the historical background of the place: Jaffa of the 19th century was surrounded by walls with one gate (not including the port) \u2014 the \u201cJerusalem Gate\u201d \u2014 to the East. The city, which was completely destroyed by Napoleon\u2019s forces in 1799, was rebuilt by the local Ottoman government. The disconnect between the city and the open spaces around it was expressed by the wall, the moat and the gate that kept the port city closed, without development or new building in the vacant territories around it, while different populations flowed into the \u201cOld City\u201d in an ongoing process of overcrowding and chronic shortages of buildings and infrastructure. The campaign to conquer the land of Israel by Ibrahim Pasha (1831), the son of the Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali, who rebelled against Ottoman imperial rule, changed the reality in Jaffa and began a new relationship between the city and its agricultural hinterlands.<\/p>\n

The local agriculture around Jaffa was cultivated primarily for local consumption. A small part of the produce was sent from the Jaffa Port to neighboring countries. The breach of the walls by the Egyptian ruler and the development of citrus-based agriculture contributed to the city\u2019s transformation into the economic capital of Palestine with its citrus orchards providing its primary export. The Egyptian occupation contributed greatly to the supply of skilled agricultural manpower and was accompanied by Egyptian forces in the crowded sakhnot<\/em> (neighborhoods outside the city walls) around Jaffa.<\/p>\n

The ancient method of irrigation by pumping, using the \u201cAntillean\u201d technology brought by the Egyptians, allowed for accelerated development and extensive planting throughout the region. Each well that was excavated was equipped with a pumping device consisting of an animal that moved a horizontal wheel which rotated a vertical wheel to which a chain with the pumping bucket was attached. The water that came up from the well was stored in a big irrigation pool, from which canals emerged, leading to the orchard. The well house and the orchard were surrounded by stone walls and prickly pear cactus for protection.<\/p>\n

As orchard production expanded and the old city became crowded and unbearable on account of a lack of infrastructure, the orchard owners, Jaffa\u2019s wealthy, moved from the city into the heart of their orchards. There, by the well and among the trees, luxurious palaces were built where the orchard owners lived, at first only during the summer months, but toward the end of the century, they moved there year round. The orchard owners conducted a feudal lifestyle, primarily with regard to the Egyptian and fallahim<\/em> (local peasants). <\/em>This further contributed to the isolation and seclusion of each of the well houses and orchards.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the historical road to Jerusalem, which crosses the Abu Kabir area, was in constant use by pilgrims. Over the years, monasteries and churches were built along the way. The existence of Christian institutions in the heart of the Muslim agricultural region required the Christians to protect themselves against their surroundings, by building their own complexes with high, impenetrable stone walls which remain in place to this day.<\/p>\n

In the early formation of the rural hinterlands of Jaffa,[4]<\/sup><\/a> starting from the first half of the 19th century, isolated complexes of well houses and sakhnot<\/em> for workers, as well as churches and monasteries, created isolated islands within the green sea of orchards. So the archipelago\u2019s character was established upon its inception.<\/p>\n

More significant changes in building began in the 1920s, with the expansion of South Tel Aviv neighborhoods and the eastward development of Jaffa. New construction trampled the orchards and again left the historic complexes as isolated islands, this time within the sea of new urban construction that increasingly besieged them. On account of their enclosed nature, and in light of the development processes around them, the surviving complexes fortified and withdrew into themselves all the more stubbornly, completely alienated from their surroundings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is worth listing a few islands of embarrassment which, together, make up Abu Kabir\u2019s archipelago:<\/p>\n