[News] Boycotting the architects of Israel’s occupation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Boycotting the architects of Israel’s occupation

Abe Hayeem <http://electronicintifada.net/people/abe-hayeem>
http://electronicintifada.net/content/boycotting-architects-israels-occupation/13344 
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada>
25 April 2014

A nine-year-long campaign to hold Israeli architects responsible for 
their role in dispossessing Palestinians reached a significant stage on 
19 March. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) approved a 
call for its Israeli equivalent to be suspended from the International 
Union of Architects.

This decision echoes an important precedent. In 1978, RIBA protested 
against apartheid <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/apartheid> in 
South Africa <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/south-africa> by 
severing its links with the South African Schools of Architecture.

While the campaign for an academic boycott 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/academic-boycott> of Israel has 
grown in recent years, the 19 March vote could be the first successful 
action against Israel’s professional institutes. This decision — the 
result of mobilization by Architects and Planners for Justice in 
Palestine, backed by eminent architects and academics 
<http://apjp.org/signatories/> around the world — has put the spotlight 
on how Israeli architects assist the occupation in a most unethical way.

It is appropriate that the world body of architects takes action against 
the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA). Members of the IAUA 
have designed many of the settlements 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-settlements> that Israel has 
built — and is continuing to build — in the occupied West Bank 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/west-bank>, including East Jerusalem 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem>, as well as Israel’s 
apartheid wall <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israels-wall-west-bank>.

These settlements are illegal under international law. Significantly, we 
are approaching the tenth anniversary of the International Court of 
Justice <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/international-court-justice> 
advisory opinion of July 2004, which declared 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/dismantle-wall-says-international-court-justice/1747> 
Israel’s wall and the settlements unlawful. Architects facilitating 
these human rights violations and war crimes are thus a legitimate 
target of boycott.


    Deeply political

Architecture is a deeply political profession, and Israeli architects 
operate in a hyper-political environment. One of Israel’s architecture 
schools is located in Ariel University 
<http://www.ariel.ac.il/architecture/en>, built inside the Israeli 
settlement of Ariel in the West Bank.

The charter of the International Union of Architects (IUA) reminds 
architects that they have an obligation <http://apjp.org/aims/> to 
“thoughtfully consider the social and environmental impact of their 
professional activities.” It also requires architects to respect 
heritage and to help preserve it.

As designing settlements is a deliberate attempt to erase Palestinians’ 
heritage and dispossess them from their homes and land, members of the 
Israeli Association of United Architects have reneged on their 
obligations under the IUA Accords.

In 2005 and 2009, the International Union of Architects’ General 
Assembly approved a resolution condemning the construction of buildings 
and development projects on land that had been ethnically cleansed or 
illegally appropriated (“RIBA votes to suspend Israeli architects’ 
association from international body 
<http://apjp.org/riba-votes-to-suspend-israeli/>,” Architects and 
Planners for Justice in Palestine, 20 March 2014).

The Israeli Association of United Architects, despite numerous appeals, 
has not paid any attention to those decisions. Logic dictates that it 
should be suspended from the international body for architects until it 
starts complying with that body’s ethical codes and international law, 
and when these illegal projects end.

In August this year, the World Congress of the International Union of 
Architects will take place in Durban, South Africa. It is vital that 
participants take this action against Israeli architects over the role 
they play in designing the infrastructure of occupation and apartheid, 
and the “Judaization” policies in occupied East Jerusalem 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem>, the Galilee 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/galilee>, the Naqab (Negev) 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/naqab> and Palestinian neighborhoods 
in cities within present-day Israel.


    Selective outrage?

This decision by RIBA has been meet with orchestrated fury by the 
pro-Israel lobby and media 
<http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/leader/116909/boycott-hypocrites>. 
The usual accusations of “singling out” Israel and anti-Semitism were 
trotted out, and the enumeration of all the world’s different atrocities 
compared with Israel’s “model democracy” in the heart of Arab Middle 
East. A boycott of RIBA being used as a venue for bar mitzvahs was also 
suggested.

Top-level British politicians and two famous American architects have 
vilified RIBA for its principled stance. But a letter signed by top 
architects, academics and cultural figures 
<http://apjp.org/riba-is-right-to-censure-israe/> to support this 
courageous action by RIBA, asking it not to bow to the intimidation and 
accusation of anti-Semitism, was publicized widely.

After the vote took place, the Israeli Association of United Architects 
called on British Prime Minister David Cameron 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/david-cameron> to intervene. They 
recalled that he had spoken against boycotts of Israel during his visit 
to Jerusalem <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/jerusalem> earlier this 
year, though he also condemned the accelerating settlement construction 
(“Israeli architects ask David Cameron to block RIBA boycott 
<http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/116919/israeli-architects-ask-david-cameron-block-riba-boycott>,” 
/The Jewish Chronicle/, 27 March 2014).

Michael Gove <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/michael-gove>, the UK’s 
education secretary and an avowed Zionist, has accused RIBA of 
“selective outrage” (“Gove’s reaction to the censure of Israeli 
architects involved in illegal construction in the West Bank was to be 
expected 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/goves-reaction-to-the-censure-of-israeli-architects-involved-in-illegal-construction-in-the-west-bank-was-to-be-expected-9248666.html>,” 
/The Independent/, 9 April 2014).

His allegation is ludicrous. Our initiative wasn’t in response to a 
small sample of misdemeanors by Israeli architects, but to their general 
practice.

Gove and his colleagues in the British government have ensured that 
Israel is treated with impunity despite its routine abuses of human 
rights and flouting of dozens of United Nations resolutions.

Eyal Weizman, a courageous Israeli architect whose books /A Civilian 
Occupation/ and /Hollow Land/ expose how many of his peers were 
assisting Israel’s illegal acts, has delivered a strong riposte to our 
critics. In a statement 
<http://apjp.org/israeli-architect-defends-riba/> for /The Architects’ 
Journal/, he writes that the attacks on our initiative “willfully invert 
perpetrator and victim, divert the discussion from the ongoing 
suffering, theft and violence enacted through the architecture employed 
in the context of Israel’s occupation and close an avenue for a better 
and more hopeful future.”


    Duty to speak out

Michael Mansfield 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/un-must-prosecute-israel-war-crimes-says-bloody-sunday-lawyer/10987>, 
a British barrister who was was a key adjudicator in the Russell 
Tribunal on Palestine <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1408982.stm>, 
was among numerous distinguished figures to support the RIBA motion. 
“There can be no doubt about Israel’s flagrant disregard for 
international law,” he stated. “The ICJ in 2004 made it clear that 
everyone had an obligation to help end this illegal situation.”

Desmond Tutu 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/archbishop-desmond-tutu>, the South 
African archbishop, once said 
<http://www.tutufoundation-usa.org/exhibitions.html>: “If you are 
neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the 
oppressor.”

Architects of conscience have a duty to speak out when members of our 
profession in Israel are assisting the gross injustices perpetrated 
against the Palestinians. We cannot remain neutral.

/Abe Hayeem is a founding member of Architects and Planners for Justice 
in Palestine <http://apjp.org/>./

-- 
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863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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