Stop the Highway, Build the Fouad Boutros Park

[The Highway Cutting through Hekmeh Neighborhood. Photo Courtesy Civil Coalition against the HIghway Project.] [The Highway Cutting through Hekmeh Neighborhood. Photo Courtesy Civil Coalition against the HIghway Project.]

Stop the Highway, Build the Fouad Boutros Park

By : Jadaliyya Reports

In Lebanon, highway projects cutting through urban neighborhoods and displacing people, in the name of urban modernity, economic development and improving traffic are not new. They are often implementing old designs elaborated in the 1960s by planners who conceived the city prioritizing vehicular movement. More than half a decade later, Lebanese planning agencies do not reconsider those grand plans, despite contemporary urban planning policy trends that advocate addressing  transportation problems via soft mobility schemes and public transportation projects. In the middle of Achrafieh, a section of Beirut known for its rich urban heritage and architectural character, one of those highways is threatening to slice the neighborhood of Hikmeh, and being advocated as a beacon of progress and efficiency by planners, municipal leaders and political elites alike. For months, civil society activists have been trying to dialogue with decision-makers and convince them of alternative solutions to resolve traffic congestion in Achrafieh, to no avail. Thus, the "Civil Coalition against the Highway Project (Fouad Boutros Road)" threatening the old neighborhood of Hekmeh (Beirut, Lebanon) has issued a petition on 24 February 2014 demanding the cancellation of the highway project in favor of the "Fouad Boutros Park" and of alternative road infrastructures. Below is an excerpt of the petition text.

Beirut is becoming a city of asphalt, concrete and glass, without a tree, without an identity and without any gentleness. We have a right to the city and to its future, this is the opportunity to finally claim these rights! Let’s ask for the end of senseless and obsolete highway projects, let us promote, instead, the green spaces we severely lack and the smart management of traffic flow we desperately need.

We, the undersigned citizens, inhabitants and merchants of concerned neighborhoods and of Achrafieh, Rmeil and Medawar; employees, managers and owners of affected economic institutions; members of civil society, of social, environmental and cultural associations, of movements for civil rights; professionals and academicians of civil society, urban planners, architects and engineers; united under the name of the Civil Coalition Against the Highway Project “Hekmeh-Turk" Axis ("Fouad Boutros" road), announce our total refusal of the “Hekmeh-Turk" axis (Fouad Boutros road) highway project in all its aspects, road devices and components and ask for its immediate cessation and final cancellation. We also ask for the halt and cessation of all expropriation and bid procedures, whatever the advancement of the project and regardless of modifications, additions and so-called “improvements” on the original scheme (design), for a great number of reasons.

We demand that the people in charge at the municipality of Beirut officially cancel the project, and declare this in the shortest time possible. We also demand that they replace it with the following projects, which will cost less than the current project and will benefit many more areas of Beirut. (All the forthcoming projects are the product of recent studies completed by volunteering professionals, urban planners, architects and engineers).

- The creation of a staircase park, under the name of the “Fouad Boutros Park,” with a mainly cultural, social and historical character, on the parcels already expropriated between the Mar Mitr street and Armenia Street. This park would be the first new park in Beirut since Lebanon took its Independence and will offer citizens some of the green spaces the city badly needs. A golden opportunity can be grasped here, as most of the plots for this park are already owned by the municipality. This project will preserve the rich garden and orchard vegetation and protect the architectural heritage in a profitable way by renovating it and converting it with a cultural and commercial program that will preserve the social fabric of the neighborhood by allowing all of its inhabitants to remain in it.

- The construction of a complete tunnel under the Charles Malek Avenue, from the Fouad Chehab Avenue in the west (Ring bridge), until the Emile Lahoud Avenue to the East, executed by tunnel-boring. As well as the reconfiguration of main crossroads, which will make exchange flows more fluid, especially at the level of "Collège de la Sagesse" and will improve circulation on the Charles Malek avenue, Sassine Square and all their tributary streets.


- The transfer of circulation flows toward the Emile Lahoud Avenue as it is wide and under-used—especially during peak times—then toward the most important East-West penetrating roads (Sioufi slope, Armenia Street, Charles Helou Avenue) by building efficient and modern interchanges and improving the extremities and intersections of the Emile Lahoud Avenue.


- The launch of serious studies regarding the implementation of public transportation in Beirut, which is the only sustainable solution to problems of traffic congestion and which will most certainly improve the quality of urban life and the environment overall. We should strive, as all great cities in the world do, to decrease, rather than increase, the presence of the car.

Here are the hyperlinks to sign the petition in English, and to read its texts in French and Arabic. As this goes to press, local media outlets, blogs and social media sites are increasingly mobilized in support of the Coalition which is also calling for a series of protests.

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 8: Resigning the State Department Over Gaza With Hala Rharrit

      Long Form Podcast Episode 8: Resigning the State Department Over Gaza With Hala Rharrit

      In this episode of Long Form, Hala Rharrit discusses the factors that led her to resign from the US State Department, the mechanisms by which institutional corruption and ideological commitments of officials and representatives ensure US support for Israel, and how US decision-makers consistently violate international law and US laws/legislation. Rharrit also addresses the Trump administration’s claim that South Africa is perpetrating genocide against the country’s Afrikaaner population, and how this intersects with the US-Israeli campaign of retribution against South Africa for hauling Israel before the ICJ on charges of genocide.

    • Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      The entire globe stands behind Israel as it faces its most intractable existential crisis since it started its slow-motion Genocide in 1948. People of conscience the world over are in tears as Israel has completely run out of morals and laws to violate during its current faster-paced Genocide in Gaza. Israelis, state and society, feel helpless, like sitting ducks, as they search and scramble for an inkling of hope that they might find one more human value to desecrate, but, alas, their efforts remain futile. They have covered their grounds impeccably and now have to face the music. This is an emergency call for immediate global solidarity with Israel’s quest far a lot more annihilation. Please lend a helping limb.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      In this episode, Mandy Turner discusses the vital role think tanks play in the policy process, and in manufacturing consent for government policy. Turner recently published a landmark study of leading Western think tanks and their positions on Israel and Palestine, tracing pronounced pro-Israel bias, where the the key role is primarily the work of senior staff within these institutions, the so-called “gatekeepers.”

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