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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Boycotting the architects of Israel’s
occupation</h1>
<div class="field-author">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/abe-hayeem"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Abe
Hayeem</a> </div>
<div class="field-publisher">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">http://electronicintifada.net/content/boycotting-architects-israels-occupation/13344</a>
</div>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-04-25T18:57:00+00:00">25 April
2014</span> </div>
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style="width: 618px;"><br>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>This decision echoes an important precedent. In 1978, RIBA protested
against <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/apartheid">apartheid</a>
in <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/south-africa">South
Africa</a> by severing its links with the South African Schools of
Architecture.</p>
<p>While the campaign for an <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/academic-boycott">academic
boycott</a> 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, <a
href="http://apjp.org/signatories/">backed by eminent architects and
academics</a> around the world — has put the spotlight on how Israeli
architects assist the occupation in a most unethical way.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-settlements">settlements</a>
that Israel has built — and is continuing to build — in the occupied <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/west-bank">West Bank</a>,
including <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem">East
Jerusalem</a>, as well as <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israels-wall-west-bank">Israel’s
apartheid wall</a>.</p>
<p>These settlements are illegal under international law.
Significantly, we are approaching the tenth anniversary of the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/international-court-justice">International
Court of Justice</a> advisory opinion of July 2004, which <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/dismantle-wall-says-international-court-justice/1747">declared</a>
Israel’s wall and the settlements unlawful. Architects facilitating
these human rights violations and war crimes are thus a legitimate
target of boycott.</p>
<h2>Deeply political</h2>
<p>Architecture is a deeply political profession, and Israeli
architects operate in a hyper-political environment. One of Israel’s
architecture schools is <a
href="http://www.ariel.ac.il/architecture/en">located in Ariel
University</a>, built inside the Israeli settlement of Ariel in the
West Bank.</p>
<p>The charter of the International Union of Architects (IUA) reminds
architects that they have an <a href="http://apjp.org/aims/">obligation</a>
to “thoughtfully consider the social and environmental impact of their
professional activities.” It also requires architects to respect
heritage and to help preserve it.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 (“<a
href="http://apjp.org/riba-votes-to-suspend-israeli/">RIBA votes to
suspend Israeli architects’ association from international body</a>,”
Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, 20 March 2014).</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem">East Jerusalem</a>,
the <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/galilee">Galilee</a>,
the <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/naqab">Naqab (Negev)</a>
and Palestinian neighborhoods in cities within present-day Israel.</p>
<h2>Selective outrage?</h2>
<p>This decision by RIBA has been meet with <a
href="http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/leader/116909/boycott-hypocrites">orchestrated
fury by the pro-Israel lobby and media</a>. 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.</p>
<p>Top-level British politicians and two famous American architects
have vilified RIBA for its principled stance. But <a
href="http://apjp.org/riba-is-right-to-censure-israe/">a letter signed
by top architects, academics and cultural figures</a> to support this
courageous action by RIBA, asking it not to bow to the intimidation and
accusation of anti-Semitism, was publicized widely.</p>
<p>After the vote took place, the Israeli Association of United
Architects called on British Prime Minister <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/david-cameron">David Cameron</a>
to intervene. They recalled that he had spoken against boycotts of
Israel during his visit to <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/jerusalem">Jerusalem</a>
earlier this year, though he also condemned the accelerating settlement
construction (“<a
href="http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/116919/israeli-architects-ask-david-cameron-block-riba-boycott">Israeli
architects ask David Cameron to block RIBA boycott</a>,” <em>The
Jewish Chronicle</em>, 27 March 2014).</p>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/michael-gove">Michael
Gove</a>, the UK’s education secretary and an avowed Zionist, has
accused RIBA of “selective outrage” (“<a
href="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">Gove’s
reaction to the censure of Israeli architects involved in illegal
construction in the West Bank was to be expected</a>,” <em>The
Independent</em>, 9 April 2014).</p>
<p>His allegation is ludicrous. Our initiative wasn’t in response to a
small sample of misdemeanors by Israeli architects, but to their
general practice.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Eyal Weizman, a courageous Israeli architect whose books <em>A
Civilian Occupation</em> and <em>Hollow Land</em> expose how many of
his peers were assisting Israel’s illegal acts, has delivered a strong
riposte to our critics. In a <a
href="http://apjp.org/israeli-architect-defends-riba/">statement</a>
for <em>The Architects’ Journal</em>, 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.”</p>
<h2>Duty to speak out</h2>
<p><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/un-must-prosecute-israel-war-crimes-says-bloody-sunday-lawyer/10987">Michael
Mansfield</a>, a British barrister who was <a
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1408982.stm">was a key
adjudicator in the Russell Tribunal on Palestine</a>, 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.”</p>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/archbishop-desmond-tutu">Desmond
Tutu</a>, the South African archbishop, once <a
href="http://www.tutufoundation-usa.org/exhibitions.html">said</a>:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the
side of the oppressor.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>Abe Hayeem is a founding member of <a href="http://apjp.org/">Architects
and Planners for Justice in Palestine</a>.</em></p>
</div>
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