A nationalist and a Zionist

By Esther Zandberg

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/568180.html
Several months ago, when he was asked to examine a plan to establish new
settlements in the area of the Nitzanim sands for the Jewish settlers of Gush
Katif who are to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip under the disengagement
plan, architect Saadia Mandel set to work.

He took aerial photographs of the dunes along the shore between Ashkelon and
Ashdod and calculated areas. Then he took scissors and cut out the patches of
the existing Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, moving them around until
they fit nicely into the area. Then he pasted the patches on to the aerial
photograph of the sands and reported to his client, attorney Yitzhak Miron of
The Lawyers' Forum for the Land of Israel, that the area was appropriate and
that it was possible to implement the plan.

Mandel's professional opinion can raise eyebrows. As an architect identified
with preservation and restoration, and as an educator who preaches to his
students to "look right and left before you put down your cube," it would have
been expected that he would have rejected the very idea outright. The Nitzanim
sands are the last empty open area in the region; wearing another of his hats,
Mandel was a partner to their rescue and to the proposal, now awaiting
approval, to declare them a dune park and nature reserve.



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However, this time he deviated from his custom, giving his professional seal
of approval to putting a great many cubes down on the sands.

The Nitzanim plan has been stirring public opinion ever since it emerged from
its secrecy a few weeks ago. It supporters claim the dune reserve will not be
harmed by the construction of the settlements, whereas its many opponents say
the settlements will choke it with building and pollution. In any case, the
plan is contrary to the planning policy in the region, and the opposition to
it is comprised of many elements, from the green organizations to the Housing
Ministry. Local council heads in the south also argue that it will hurt
existing locales, which are in dire need of reinforcement, and they mention
the sufficient stock of appropriate housing solutions that already exist.

How is it that you lent a hand to a plan like this?

Mandel: "What persuaded me to do this plan is the value of staying together as
a community. In Ramat Aviv, there is no communication among neighbors in the
same building, between the second floor and the seventh floor. But in Gush
Katif, they were fenced off for years, facing the enemy outside, and they
became a crystallized society. If you crumble them, you are imposing another
punishment, even though they've done nothing wrong. The investigation that we
made first of all takes into account the sands reserve, which I myself was
partner to rescuing. We've left the reserve outside the plan, and in the
remaining area we found that there is enough space to locate the settlements.
In general, the illusion that there is empty space is a myth. Every space has
something in it - people, animals, a topograpy - and you have to apply
judiciousness."

A soldier in the planning army

Mandel is one the most veteran and senior architects in Israel, and one of the
first to have participated in the planning of Jewish settlements in the
territories immediately after the Six-Day War. Many others came after him. He
is the only architect with whom I have spoken over the years who declares that
there is a direct connection between his work and his political views, and he
does not hide behind neutral professionalism. "There is no architecture
without politics," he says. "There is no doubt that I - though there's all the
difference in the world - like Hitler's architect Albert Speer, am a full
partner to the ideology." The frankness does not make his remarks any easier.

"I am a Zionist nationalist," declares Mandel. He identifies with the
positions of the extreme right in Israel; "I would say that I am close in my
opinions to [National Union MK] Zvi Hendel and [Religious Zionism MK] Effi
Eitam." The lawyers forum that called him to the colors is a body that was
founded by Nachi Eyal, the chairman of the Tekuma movement, which is helping
the settlers bargain over the conditions of the evacuation, and to prove again
that they are the "Lords of the Land," as in the title of the book by Idith
Zertal and Akiva Eldar about the birth of the settlements. There is no doubt
that the lawyers forum knew to whom to turn in order to obtain the
professional opinion they wanted about the construction at Nitzanim.

Like the people of the forum, Mandel is opposed to the disengagement and sees
it as "nonsense. Big deal. Suddenly people see in the pullout from Gaza the
be-all and end-all. It isn't going to bring peace, and it also isn't going to
solve the problems of poverty." However, once things reached the situation
they are in, Mandel enlisted, with regret, his qualifications and his
reputation to promote the demands of the Gush settlers, whom even Environment
Minister Shalom Simhon has called "bullies."

At the time, Mandel was also responsible for planning the route to enrichment
for the evacuees from the Rafah salient.

Mandel has been acquainted with Gush Katif since the 1980s, when he planned
the tourism and vacation area there, which includes a guest house, a horse
ranch and the development of a promenade and facilities along the beach, a few
steps away from "Lower Gush Katif," as Gideon Levy defines it - where
Palestinian refugees live in abject poverty, strangled and imprisoned from all
sides and invisible to the enlightened planner.

"The Jewish settlement in Gaza," admits Mandel, "is one of the acts for which
I did not understand the motivation behind it. To stick Jews in the heart of
an Arab population looks mistaken, but it is in no way immoral in my eyes.
Maybe there is some clever political idea that I haven't understood. If an
architect thinks he doesn't want to lend a hand to this, then he shouldn't."

Mandel began to plan in the territories during the days of the euphoria after
the Six-Day War. Like many of his colleagues, he also continued after it
turned into a nightmare. Even before he took off his uniform as a reserve
soldier in the war, he became a soldier in the planning army. "I went along
with the forces that determined that here Jews will live, and I tried to do
the best possible thing architecturally in those places," he says.

Those places are, among others, the Jewish Quarter in East Jerusalem, the
Avraham Avinu neighborhood in the casbah of Hebron, and David's City in
Silwan, among the fiercest nodes of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the twilight
zone between occupation, art and messianism.

Judaizing Silwan

Of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City, Mandel says: "There was a
government decision to restore the quarter immediately after the Six-Day War.
The government, yours and mine, decided to taunt the Arabs and say, `You
destroyed this place? You thought you were done with us? So no. We're going to
build and restore it to bring back the former glory.' There was no wavering
about whether to do it. They recruited us and we came. You're asking me
whether in retrospect I regret this? I have no regrets."

Years later, at the beginning of the 1990s, Mandel planned the residential
neighborhood in David's City, at the invitation of the extreme right-wing
association Elad, which acts to Judaize the area. The plan, which was
cunningly inserted into the accelerated approval track for building for
immigrants, ostensibly, was never implemented and the place was declared an
archaeological park. As though revealing a secret, Mandel says, "Those Jews
from Elad simply wanted to protest against the wild Arab construction at the
site, and to wake the state out of its slumber, and they succeeded."

Those Jews from Elad succeeded in buying land and dozens of houses in Silwan,
moving Jewish families into them in the midst of a dense Arab population.
Mandel describes David's City as a paradise of peaceful coexistence, where "a
few Jewish families are living, and also Arab families, in good neighborliness
and a courteous status quo." However, it appears that something is rotten in
the land of the pastoral - as the press has reported only recently, the
Jerusalem municipality has been sending demolition and evacuation orders to
Palestinian houses in Silwan that were built without permits, miraculously
passing over Jewish homes.

`The right thing to do'

Mandel got involved in the planning of the Avraham Avinu neighborhood - a
state of extremist Jewish settlers in the center of Hebron - at the initiative
of the settlers, who thought the pace of the government's planning was too
slow and decided to take action, under the leadership of Ze'ev Hever (Zambish)
and Menachem Livni from Kiryat Arba, who belonged to the Jewish underground.
Mandel realized, "It was crazy to settle Jews in the middle of a bloc of Arabs
in Hebron," but instead of embarking on one of the public campaigns for which
he was famed while wearing other hats, he went to Hebron to meet with the
players and to formulate, together with them, solutions that would help them
conduct their lives in security in the heart of the insanity.

"There was a very interesting conversation," he recalls. "I asked why, in
fact, did you come here? Did you come to live with the Arabs? Facing the
Arabs? Despite the Arabs? Or against the Arabs? And these aren't just words,
because every one of those words has a different architectural meaning. Five
men and three women, who were crocheting skullcaps the whole time,
participated in the meeting. I told them that there were two possibilities:
Either you live here and Abu Abdullah lives down the lane, and you go out with
your child to the nursery and Abu Abdullah goes out into the lane at the same
hour, and the two of you meet, or you go into your house from the inner side,
and from your house you can see Abu Abdullah and Mrs. Abdullah in their yard,
but you don't meet."

And what did they decide?

"On the entrance from inside. They preferred separation."

In retrospect, you don't have regrets?

"What was done in Hebron, and here I dare heap praise on myself, was the right
thing to do. Plia (Albeck, an attorney in the State Prosecutor's Office after
the Six-Day War, who `was responsible for one of the most sophisticated and
virtuoso projects of occupation and annexation of the recent era,' as Zertal
and Eldar write in their book - E.Z.) insisted that we not do massive building
there, and I insisted on permanent structures that respect the historical
texture, and I succeeded. It doesn't matter who lives there when the country's
borders are finally decided, Levinger or Mohammed. It is clear that had I not
thought that Jews should return to Hebron I would not have committed myself to
planning there."

Identifies with violence

In Hebron, Mandel's political thinking was also reinforced. He attributes its
ideological and practical sources to Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion and
"that Mapainik" (referring to the party that was the precursor of today's
Labor Party), Ariel Sharon, to whose policy of one acre and then another acre
to Judaize the expanse of the occupation he has harnessed himself again and
again. Mandel says the process of the reinforcement of his political ideas is
like the story of the man who wet his pants and, after he had psychological
treatment, still wet his pants, but stopped being ashamed of it.

The point of the comparison is the change in Mandel's attitude toward Zionism
as a result of his self-treatment. Mandel: "You and I know that Zionism is an
aggressive and violent movement. But, unlike you, I've `had therapy' and I'm
no longer ashamed of that. You are. As this is the case, I have no problem
identifying with aggressive and violent actions by the state. Therefore, I
have participated in projects that, in your opinion, are work in occupied
territory."

Have the historical circumstances not changed since then?

"Listen: It was not alright what we did in 1982, and it is not alright today.
Hebron put all that violence into one basket. The idea of that man with the
beard who stood on the balcony in Basel - of bringing the Jews to this island
in the Middle East - was a crazy and violent idea. The legend that the land
was empty, just sand and more sand, is a gigantic lie that they sold me. It
wasn't all sand at all. My parents had friends on Mane Street in Tel Aviv and
under their balcony I saw brown hens, Arab hens. In Masaryk Square, there were
Arabs, and in Soumeil, and in Sheikh Munis. Where are those Arabs now? To
survive it was necessary to occupy and expel them."

Is there no end to occupation and expulsion? Hasn't the time come to learn
some lessons?

"My father took me at the age of 7 to Palestine. He didn't ask me whether I
wanted to go to a place where they are pushing the Arabs out. My office is
located in occupied territory in Old Jaffa, and Mishmar Ha'emek is also
occupied territory, so I really suggest that we return it to the Arabs, too. I
make no distinction between what we did in the second decade of the last
century, in 1948 or in the 1970s. The immoral acts of the occupation that we
did then, we are continuing to do today. We can't be nice, but I live in peace
with that."

Until when are we going to continue to do those things?

"In Hebron I began to think about whether this place, where Jews lived until
1929 and they were slaughtered, is part of the State of Israel, yes or no.
Peoples decide for themselves what states they want, and only then `the family
of nations,' as you call it, the United Nations, Oom-shmoom as Ben-Gurion
called it, gives its approval. And as long as we have not drawn the map and
have not determined what state we want, then, yes, we're building in Hebron
and anywhere else."

Inventing Jaffa

Mandel was born in 1931 in Novy Sad in Serbia, and came to Israel as a child
with his family in 1938. He studied at the Beaux Arts in Paris and at the
Architectural Association in London, and he is a graduate of the architecture
faculty at the Technion in Haifa. He is an impressive man and looks far
younger than his 74 years. His Ashekenazi appearance creates an amusing
dissonance with his first name, Saadia. His friends call him by a nickname
that has a more Balkan ring, Sachku.

He is a cosmopolitan of the older generation, speaks several European
languages, including Serbian, and regards the world with an imperialist and
colonial stoicism. "We are just one episode in the history of this region.
People have come and gone. An Arab woman used to live where my office in Jaffa
is. She came to visit us after the Six-Day War. That's how it is, one day
you're up and one day you're down. In my house in Novy Sad, there's a Serbian
family living now." He himself lives in Herzliya Pituah.

For decades he has been running an independent architectural firm, which son
Yariv Mandel has joined in recent years as a partner. The firm is responsible
for the planning of scores of different projects, private homes, public
buildings and more. However, he is mainly identified with restoration and
preservation. He is among the founders of the Council for the Preservation of
Sites and has served in a volunteer capacity as the head of its Tel Aviv
branch since it was founded in 1984. "I have an allergy to the word
preservation," he says. "Every architect is a preservation architect if he's a
civilized person."

Mandel's office has been located for 45 years in the same place at Kedumim
Square in Old Jaffa, and took part in its restoration and reinvention as an
artists' colony and tourism site. He is also partner to restoration and
rehabilitation projects in Old Acre, Old Safed, Yemin Moshe in Jerusalem and,
as already mentioned, Hebron and East Jerusalem. Each of these sites carries a
load of critical explosives that is behind the ostensibly innocent term
"restoration," and could furnish materials for entire cultural studies. In
addition to his work as an architect, to this day he fills a number of
academic and public roles.

Until this year, Mandel served for about two years as head of the architecture
department at Judea and Samaria College in the Jewish settlement of Ariel in
the West Bank, where he now teaches. He does not even begin to understand that
it is outrageous and immoral to teach architecture in a place where the
occupation has sown ruin and destruction, with the full help of architects.
"You already know that the Green Line doesn't exist in my eyes. That's just an
episode. Until such time as the country's borders are fixed, everything is an
occupation. But, as I told you, I've had therapy and I'm no longer ashamed."
And the conversation goes back to where it started.