On Our Intervention in Kalam al-Nas: Real Estate Development Will Not Realize the Dreams of the Lebanese

[One of the banners unfolded during the intervention. It reads: “The dream of our city does not lie in real estate development, rather in public spaces and open access to the sea.” Image by the campaign] [One of the banners unfolded during the intervention. It reads: “The dream of our city does not lie in real estate development, rather in public spaces and open access to the sea.” Image by the campaign]

On Our Intervention in Kalam al-Nas: Real Estate Development Will Not Realize the Dreams of the Lebanese

By : The Civic Campaign for the Preservation of Daliyeh الحملة الأهلية للحفاظ عن دالية الروشة

On Thursday 26 June 2014, a number of activists from the Civic Campaign for the Preservation of Dalieh infiltrated a live broadcasting of an episode of LBC’s Kalam al-Nas in Downtown Biel’s “Dream Real Estate Expo.” The particular episode tackled the topic of real estate development in Lebanon, and aired live from from Downtown Biel’s “Dream Real Estate Expo.” 

This special episode brought together a number of real-estate developers who participated in the Expo, showcasing their high-end large-apartment-type projects. These guests also included a current member of parliament, a former minister, and the event organizers. One of the key assumptions behind the organization of this episode (and the Expo, more generally) is that home ownership is the actual dream of all Lebanese people. Furthermore, the episode attempted to present the real estate sector as the foundation of the Lebanese economy, the engine of job creation in the country, and the solution to the current housing crisis. The episode also shed light on the newly established Federation of Real Estate Developers (Jam‘iyyat al-Muttawireen al ‘Iqariyyeen), lobbying for policy change to further attract investors, clients, and developers.

The guests presented a common vision of real estate development as the one guaranty for the realization of the dreams of the entire Lebanese population. But the question stands: What truly are the dreams of the Lebanese? Can one fathom that a handful of capital holders and real estate developers outline the dreams “of the Lebanese” and articulate a framework to achieve them? Or was this in fact a promotion for “dreams” that sustain this handful of developers and their political supporters; a justification for the withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities toward making sustainable policies that would eventually achieve citizens’ aspirations, and an excuse for increasingly providing financial and technical facilities for investors in this sector?

Hence the campaign’s intervention on the episode aimed at contesting the real estate dream. The activists broke onto the stage with three banners[1], the first of which was snatched away from them before making it on air. The intervention aimed to tackle three topics for discussion that had not been posed during the episode.

Why Represent Private Property As Everyone’s Dream?

To begin with, we contest the idea that the general (Lebanese) public, when dreaming of an ideal sphere for their day-to-day lives, picture exclusively, or even essentially, private property as the means of happiness. By representing individual and private home ownership as the ultimate aspiration and the only solution to housing, developers confound private ownership with housing provision, and hence, they justify all the exceptions and subsidies they obtain. Furthermore, such a vision has clear negative repercussions, for its imposition to the exclusion of any other view is likely to shackle the common interest and thus, its social potential, transforming the active force that is society into a group of isolated individuals who define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume.

Making the City

The portrayal of private property ownership as the sole solution only serves the benefit of real estate developers, while disregarding other crucial needs which are only noticeable when tackled collectively–these needs include public spaces that enhance the environment’s health and social cohesion.

Handing real estate developers the ultimate responsibility of housing is a gateway for the commodification of the housing policy to support the real estate sector though housing loans and credits. Worsening this situation is the clear correlation between the group of developers and a portion of the political class that attempts to manipulate the laws of urban planning, building, lease, and ownership. This is done in order to support the interests of this particular group, rather than producing much needed public spaces, which the average citizen has been longing for, and a comprehensive housing policy compatible with the needs of the population.

The closure of public places, the threat against communal spaces, and the attempt to evict the capital’s middle and low income residents and tenants are in fact the result of the current practice of real estate development and its illusion of development for the public good.

Consequently, a large portion of the Lebanese coast has been transformed into beach resorts, exclusive hotels, and other private enterprises that only serve a small minority of the population. Additionally, the real estate sector is threatening public socialized spaces such as the Dalieh of Raouche, the Ramlet el Baida sandy beach (particularly its southern tip). These spaces deserve the protection of authorities whom have instead been shying away from the real estate sector’s advantage. This process has been happening despite the fact that the production of public spaces is essential and vital to secure and promote healthy cohesive living and urban growth for generations to come.

On another level, the “Real Estate Dream” translates into the possibility of evicting existing residents from their neighborhoods and stripping them from their memories and relationship to their city, while claiming that it is only natural and inevitable that those of low/middle income cannot dwell within the city borders. This portrayal conceals an important fact that developers/politicians are the ones who designed this very rule that organizes the market and produces this “default” situation.

Furthermore, the housing loan is suggested to resolve the housing crisis, though studies prove that it has failed to do so; numbers show that the “housing right” (in the form of a loan) does not apply to eighty percent of the Lebanese population. Our experience has only supported the argument that the real estate and banking sector does not have an eligible solution for this crisis. The sector is best legitimized to produce a city that achieves its locals’ dreams when speculation toward it is toned down and through instilling a proper tax system that would organize it. 

Supporting the Country’s Economy

Lebanon attracts real estate developers because it caters to their interests. Subsidized interest rates support demand, while very low tax rates on property ownership relieve the contractor from the pressure of selling in the event of a recession. As a result, prices are supported and developers are less likely to suffer losses–an advantage to the real estate sector that is unmatched worldwide. And to justify government support for this sector, which benefits these financial beneficiaries and their partners in government at the expense of other economic sectors, we are led to believe that the real estate sector alone can lift up our economy. These were the ideas that guests of this episode of Kalam al-Nas put forth.

In reality, agriculture and industry equally constitute economic value added, stimulate tangential sectors, create job opportunities, and produce tax revenue if they receive the government support that the real estate sector is receiving today. In terms of comprehensive economic planning, it is only logical to seek to diversify the sources of GDP, so that slowdown in one sector would not paralyze the entire economy. If the real estate sector does in fact constitute the largest share of GDP, then we should support other sectors. Supporting small-scale industry and agriculture transforms a larger portion of the general public into producers and then into savers, whereas current policies supporting the real estate sector by reducing interest rates turns the general public into debtors–as evidenced by the latest crisis that shook the United States and Europe. The subprime crisis did not extend to Lebanon because of the Lebanese citizen’s caution at borrowing and incurring debt. Guests prompted the public to abandon that same caution in favor of what they called “the culture of ownership” and “the Western mentality.”

Though it is worth taking into account the lessons learned from developed countries. When it comes to application, we just cannot blindly depend on these lessons. One of the guests of the episode deliberately promoted this blind dependency by likening the state of the real estate sector in Paris to our current real estate situation in Beirut. This is dangerously misleading for it is common knowledge that this analogy is completely unrealistic and deeply inaccurate. 

 

The case of the Raouche’s Dalieh and the case of the salary scale are similar: every time a Lebanese voice rises in the name of the public and the common interest, affecting in any way the profits of the owners of capital, we are threatened with capital flight, unemployment, and recession. But the truth is that the accumulation of profits does not actually contribute to the creation of jobs unless coupled with an increase in consumption. Only then does the demand increase and motivate profit-seeking company owners to employ. Growth is secured by creating a middle class that constitutes constant local consumption, which the slightest regional turmoil does not affect, and which constitutes a solid backing of our production sectors, including the real estate sector. Additionally, securing equal opportunities and reducing social inequality would both contribute to stability.


[To read this statement in Arabic, click
here.]



[1] The slogans on the banners were: “The dream of the 3% are producing nightmares for 90% of the people”, “80% of the Lebanese households don’t even earn the minimum required salary to access a subsidized bank loan”, and “The dream of our city does not lie in real estate development, rather in public spaces and open access to the sea.”

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412