The final day of the charrette was divided for me into three different activities; refinement of the bus station plaza and development site plan with my design colleagues Alla and Elan and my economic planning colleague Juda, a journey to the countryside surrounding Kiryat Shmona with the two other foreigners, Neil and Anna, and participation and observation of the final public meeting.
Alla, Elan, Juda and I sat down first thing in the morning and quickly responded to the critiques of the previous night and established a phased approach to development that would realize a bus plaza and much smaller development program in the first phase of development and the full program as proposed by the developer in a latter phase. All of our principles regarding development that fit the Kiryat Shmona context remained intact amongst us at and at the same time we felt we could positively respond to the concerns of the citizens that the project was too large and the concerns of the critic that we were not being realistic enough. I left Alla and Elan to work out the details and prepare perspectives, got in a car with our tour guide Zvi and headed north – to the border with Lebanon and Syria.
Zvi is nine years older than I am but in the course of the first few minutes of our drive we learn that he is a former paratrooper and had fought in the 1967 and 1973 wars that largely define Israel’s expanded borders with its neighbors. I wanted to see these borders, feel them really, and Zvi was probably as good a guide as you could get to take you to Israel’s edges. Kiryat Shmona is directly below the border with Lebanon and across the Hula Valley (please excuse my spelling, I am sure it is hideous) from the Golan Heights. A twenty-minute ride and you are passing the last outposts of Israel, the suburbs of Metulah, and heading directly for the former checkpoint with Lebanon.
Zvi drove right up to the last gate and we got out of the car. The scene is a bit surreal. In front of us is a Lebanese Village on a hill. Behind us in morning haze, an Israeli suburb on a hill. In between an abandoned factory and checkpoint. First you look one way and see a calm scene of single-family houses winding their way up a hillside, an Israeli version of Santa Clarita, California, all red tile roofs and stucco walls. Then you look the other way at the more organic algorithm of multi-generational houses that define the cluster of the Lebanese town. There is nothing particular to in this place, only the occasional bird. There really is nothing. It is no place and it is empty. You are standing in a void between two places staring at each other. It is not paranoiac but it is intensely factual. The mountains have a lot of gray radars and listening gear on them. Closer examination reveals numerous fences, defensive positions, all the stuff of conflict yet it is quiet and while there is no sense of immediate threat it is easy to see how there could be a type of long-term mental diminshment of confidence if one lived here.
But Zvi is full of energy and positive attitude. We jump back into his car and head over to the Golan Heights towards Syria. Zvi is friends with a certain Israeli Captain who runs the main checkpoint at the Syrian border and he wants to introduce us to him. Along the way, as we climb in elevation, he points out old borders, the remains of a medieval fortress on a commanding perch overlooking the old path to Damascus that could be right out of Harry Potter’s Hogwart’s, uncleared mine fields, the remains of tanks from the 67 war, newly minted vineyards, bombed out Syrian military bases sitting empty for forty years; he also takes us on quick jaunts in and out of the small Israeli, Druse and Arab villages and towns that spot this fruitful, yet rocky and barren landscape. We reach the heights, the land flattens out and we pull over. Zvi points out a white United Nations observation tower and we get back in the car and head for it.
The road to the checkpoint gradually goes from a modern two lane highway, to a two lane paved road, to a two lane dirt road, to a rutted dirt road passing in and out of rock abutments that are meant to slow down tanks. We pass the United Nations compound and are told that this is a popular posting for the Canadian, Polish and other foreign troops that are quartered here. I wonder what they do other than try to avoid getting in the way. Up ahead we see the watch towers and the border crossing point and Zvi heads straight for it at almost break neck speed. At the last moment he pulls his car to a quick stop in front of the Israeli position, jumps out and runs at a trot into the compound.
There are a lot of fences, gates and low buildings. Through the gap in the gates we can see the Syrian flag on its pole flapping. I see an Israeli women soldier moving a bucket full of liquid in the compound, as if she is about to mop the terrace. No one else is in sight except a guard in a watch tower. I am sitting in the back seat of a car looking at the reality of this crossing that can not be crossed, while our guide is negotiating some type of hand shake and wave with some officer that he thinks has a relative in the US , or maybe he was born in the US. There is mostly quiet, like at the border with Lebanon, just quiet. You are sitting in a field and all the world’s troubles are focused symbolically in the form of opposed forces right in front of us but all that is happening is that someone is cleaning up. Yet, if I got out of the car the wrong way I could be noticed and would I raise alarm? Perhaps this is the way paranoia begins in a place that is otherwise beautiful. I turn to Neil and Anna and ask, “what the hell are we doing here”? We all laugh and then see Zvi running back to our car. Apparently the Captain is away at lunch and visiting will not happen today.
Next we head to a winery where we drink quite a bit and then off to an Arabic roadside diner where we eat quite a bit. Afterwards we head to Rosh Pina, a place we have heard about all week, an historic village on a hill that has been restored. To get to Rosh Pina you have to first pass through the “new” Rosh Pina at the base of the original town’s hillside and adjacent to the roadway. Here are a series of small shopping centers and gas stations that are more or less the model that our critic from the previous night seemed to be championing. They are busy but mostly colorless and characterless, the international architecture of consumption that is very quickly boring. For the first time all day the silence of the countryside is broken and the fact that it interrupts my thoughts is annoying. I am glad to head up the mountain to the older part of town.
Historic Rosh Pina is just over a hundred years old but its importance is based on the fact that it is one of the first communities founded by Zionists escaping Europe in the 1880s. It came to the notice of one of the Rothschilds who sent money and support. It is also one of the first places where Hebrew was reconstructed as a modern language. Given its importance in the history of Israel I am struck at how fragile it seems, lonely against the landscape, a little village loop of stone houses on a hillside. Because of the time of year, it is windy and cool, no one is here. We pretty much have the town to ourselves. The street that runs up the hill is being uncovered, the asphalt of recent years is being stripped away to reveal limestone pavers. Set within the pavers are a grid of black basalt. I am struck at how permanently these people built in contrast to the small towns of the American West which often times were largely exploitive and cheap. The people who came here had no intentions of leaving. In Kiryat Shmona, all week we had been struggling to recapture that type of spirit but it was hard to find, at least amongst the townspeople. A thousand rockets had fallen on their town two years ago and we were architects and planners.
Back in the car we head down the hill and into the fields that border the Jordan River. This river is pretty small but the agriculture that comes up against it is vast. Huge swaths of apple trees, plum trees, pistachio trees, and crop fields seem way out of proportion to the size of the river. We stop again and Zvi talks to a farmer. He talks about buying more harvesting equipment. He too has no intention of leaving. Again it is very quiet while Zvi talks to the farmer. We drive mostly silent, forty-five minutes north through the valley back to Kiryat Shmona and the charrette.
One of the main reasons I came to Kiryat Shmona is I like going to places that you would never ordinarily plan to go to. I always sense that you have a better feeling for a place if you end up in that place’s no place. I think our drive gave us a better sense that this is hardly a no place but after several days of listening to townspeople express frustration with the situation in both the specific and global senses the larger situation of the borders makes one empathize with those who feel at times overwhelmed. The quiet of the land and events surrounding it are large and formidable.
At the charrette things are quickly coming to conclusion. Drawings are being pinned up. Others are being rushed to completion. I help Elan redraw his diagrams and then we go downstairs and await the final presentation. The scope of the completed work is impressive. The lobby of the community center is covered with drawings and diagrams and charts framing all the efforts. Once again eighty or so people gather and once again the City Manager begins the evening.
We are expecting fireworks. We were told the previous evening that the townspeople are going to gather together and come out and protest the City Manager and the developer proposal. We design strategies to defuse hostility. But when the City Manager speaks, for the first time all week he has a conciliatory tone. Maybe it was the breadth of the work before him that had a sense of palpability previously absent that created his positive feeling. Maybe he figured that it would be in his best interest to avoid a useless fight. Regardless, his word were about thanks, learning, and doing better. I admit I dismissed these comments as formalities, a way for the manager to move on to the business of business as usual, the creation of no place as usual.
And then a most remarkable thing happens. A women, a small town shop owner who is clearly impacted by any project that anybody might imagine comes forward before any of us have a chance to say anything and begins to read from prepared notes and thank us. She thanks us for coming to her town. She thanks us for listening to her. She thanks us for giving her hope after all the rockets and despair that maybe there is a better future. She thanks us for creating an opportunity to speak up to the City and take charge. I got up and took a picture of her while she was making this speech because I was astonished. After all the name calling and fights and cynicism somebody got it, that everybody who worked on the charrette did want the town to be a better place, not a no place on a helpless border.
And then another person got up and said basically the same thing. And a third person. Each of these people I recognized. The transformation from cynics to believers was right there before us. After twenty or so minutes of testimonials we were finally given the chance to present the once again revised proposals and plans. And when it was over things became even warmer. One by one the townspeople stood up and said “wonderful”, “you listened to us”, “you have suggested something that can make us proud”. I think in retrospect that even the City Manager constructed a different narrative that evening and his remarks at the outset were an indicator of a new realization and possibility for his town.
The Minister of Building for the norther region then stood up and stated both how impressed he was and how he would assure that the infrastructure portions of the plan would move forward. He reiterated that the merchants and tenants were still on the hook. They still had to march forward together and organize. But unlike the beginning of the week when there was no capacity to imagine these people getting together and moving forward in a common urban purpose that would cause them to stay in this place, things for the moment at least were very different.
I left Kiryat Shmona an hour later and headed for Jerusalem. We probably created a set of expectations that is way too high and I hope my friends at the Movement for Israeli Urbanism will be able to find some modest means to create some implementable next step, to continue the spirit of progress. We uncovered something hopeful in a place that is under the threat of forces that are a global and grinding fact manifested by closed borders way beyond local control. Yet also uncovered was a common human desire for betterment that if nurtured just a little bit seems so able to bloom in this place.
