A talk & presentation by Abe Hayeem from Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine
Stanmer Room, Brighthelm Centre, Brighton
Israel’s colonisation of the land of Palestine started in 1901, with the buying of land and building defensive settlements, with the ultimate aim of creating the Zionist state. The controlling of space and detailing its features and location are part of a takeover that includes actual power and control and the dispossession of its indigenous inhabitants. This is the model that was used even after 1948, continuing after 1967, becoming a vast and lucrative real-estate enterprise to house Israel’s illegal settlers in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, that has now built up to fever pitch to deny the Palestinians a sovereign state.
The talk will show how the architecture of the illegal settlements and its infrastructure in this land grab were specifically designed to dominate, surveil, exclude and fragment the West Bank, warehousing the Palestinians into mini Bantustans, using sophisticated methodology and techniques.
It will also explore the strategic E1 settlement plan east of Jerusalem (of which Ma’ale Adumim, where Sodastream are based, is part) and the current effects on the local Bedouin population.
This meeting is now extremely topical as our speaker was instrumental in last week’s dramatic vote by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), asking for the suspension of its Israeli counterpart from the International Union of Architects due to its complicity in illegal settlement construction, a development that will hopefully also be discussed.