"I didn't understand the concept behind this project," architect Khalil Abu Arafeh said to the students. "Putting Israeli and Palestinian families together in the same house is not realistic. It's hard even for families of the same nationality to live together. So how can Israelis and Palestinians live together?"

Abu Arafeh, an East Jerusalem architect and member of the CATD firm, was a guest at the final meeting of the joint planning workshop. The meeting, attended by Palestinians and Israelis, took place in Jerusalem, at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design's architecture department. The assignment was to create a jointly-owned building, with four apartments, for Israeli and Palestinian residents.

The workshop, the brainchild of the Peres Center for Peace, was established in collaboration with the non-profit Palestinian International Peace and Cooperation Center (IPCC) and the Danish government. It was held before a small audience, mainly comprised of architecture students presenting projects; their guests, Jewish and Palestinian architects; and representatives of the sponsoring organizations.

	Advertisement

"We spoke, here, of design, landscape, light - we spoke of separation between private and public - but we did not relate to the acute problem of Israelis and Palestinians," said Abu Arafeh, who is also a political caricaturist. "We have transfers on a daily basis, rather than coexistence. And our separation is not between an apartment and a stairwell - it is a separation fence." He added, "In any case, I encourage projects like this. Maybe some day, not in our lifetime, they will live together."

This is a typical product of the Peres Center for Peace, which adheres to a school of thought that initiates workshops rather than evacuating settlements. The workshop illustrated the problematic nature of apolitical peace projects. The atmosphere at the Bezalel meeting was certainly positive: Israelis and Palestinians huddled over sketch pads and gazed at computer screens, with no divisions based on religion or nationality. But at the end of the day, only the Palestinian students were subjected to inspections at checkpoints on their way home, and only they asked not to be identified by name, in order to avoid trouble.

The 16 architecture students who participated worked in mixed teams. Students joined the workshop independently, not as representatives of their academic institutions. The workshop program was formulated by Shahd Waari on behalf of the IPCC, and Yael Ben Aroya on behalf of the Peres Center.

Ben Aroya said she pondered the workshop's objectives. "Yes, it is just a drop in the ocean," she said. "And it is what it is. But the only alternative is that this won't exist, either."

The workshop was mounted with modest funding, and the time allotted to professional work was limited. The results were mostly rudimentary, and almost resembled the handiwork produced in a neighborhood community center or youth movement clubhouse. Despite that, a sketch of an integrated, jointly-owned residential building is better than the Peres Center for Peace, currently situated on the Jaffa Beach and built at tremendous cost, and mainly serves to advance a personality cult.

Preparations for the workshop began about two years ago, and there have been many transformations and delays since then. Most of these setbacks stemmed from security breaches, which peaked during the second Lebanon war.

"There were complications with entry permits and workshops canceled a night before they were set to take place," Ben Aroya said. It took the staff a long time to identify a subject that Israeli and Palestinian students would agree to examine together, and a way and place for them to do so.

Ben Aroya said she believed it was important that work take place in a studio where "they could sit together and discuss the project in universal, professional language. That contributes to mingling."

The workshop finally included only three weekend meetings. In addition to studio work, the workshop included guided tours of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and lectures on architectural planning in Jewish and Arab sectors. Regarding the latter, one Palestinian participant said, "There is no planning, and construction is not permitted."

The choice of a jointly-owned residential building as an exercise in coexistence was somewhat obvious. It facilitated examination of basic planning principles and exposure to cultural differences. In preliminary preparations, students were asked to sketch five types of homes with which they are familiar. This homework served as a "self-portrait and way to get to know one another," Ben Aroya explained. "To really visit one another's homes was impossible."

The Israeli students sketched relatively small apartments in jointly-owned buildings. The Palestinians sketched mostly large, private homes designed to meet the needs of extended families.

"They dictate that we must live with our families," architect Ibrahim Youman, Abu Arafeh's partner in the East Jerusalem firm, commented at one meeting. "We have no public construction or major building companies. We cannot build apartment buildings, and therefore we must stay with our families. It's difficult to build in general. The real problem is how to enable Arabs to plan and build large residential projects - not just small projects, like the one in the assignment."

No specific site was chosen for the plan, "intentionally and for political reasons," Ben Aroya explained. The original concept was a home on the seam line between Israel and the territories, but no appropriate location was found. Other suggested sites, like East Jerusalem, were too politically loaded or associated with anti-Arab discrimination.

"The ground here is burning, and this is a sensitive problem," Ben Aroya said. "But it is a utopian project, and as far as I am concerned, let it be on the moon. I wanted them to sit and plan together. Reality is thrown in your face, anyway. I think you also have to dream."

In deliberations following participants' presentations, one Palestinian student said, "If we didn't want to discuss the sensitive problem, we wouldn't be here. It was a mistake to repress it." The Israeli side adhered to the stance that while it is impossible to solve all problems in a workshop of this type, "the most important thing is dialogue."

The workshop was officially entitled "Schema - Sketching Peace." The Hebrew translation lowered expectations by calling it "Schema - Sketching Dialogue," omitting the word "peace." Dialogue is a nice word, and it is thought-provoking, like the workshop.