[Eyal Weizman is the nephew of a close friend of mine, so of course we're proud he's making trouble. BTW, if you ever need some excellent maps of settlements and partition plans, you should visit his website at:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/document_details.asp?CatID=127&DocID=1253]
New York Times August 10, 2002
Are Politics Built Into Architecture?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/10/arts/design/10ARCH.html
By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, Aug. 9 The concept of building the State of Israel was long
central to the Zionist dream. But after Israel's independence in 1948,
the phrase took on a more literal meaning: Israel now also had to
build the villages, towns and cities that would turn it into a modern,
prosperous and secure land. As a result, urban planners and architects
assumed a central role in defining the physical appearance of the new
nation.
A half-century later, this slice of history helps explain the
intensity of a dispute currently dividing Israeli architects. Some
argue that by designing and constructing Israeli settlements in the
occupied territories, the architectural profession has, perhaps
unwittingly, contributed to escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Others respond that architecture is neither political nor
ideological and, as such, has nothing to answer for.
The catalyst for the debate came last month when the Israel
Association of United Architects vetoed a catalog and canceled an
exhibition that it had commissioned to represent Israel at the World
Congress of Architecture in Berlin from July 22 to 26. It decided that
the catalog, titled "A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli
Architecture," would damage Israel's image abroad by presenting a
uniformly hostile view of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and
Gaza.
Uri Zerubavel, president of the association, blamed Rafi Segal and
Eyal Weizman, the two young Israeli architects who edited the catalog.
"They used our resources, they used our public name to make one-sided
political propaganda," he said in a telephone interview from Tel Aviv.
"If you are a political party, you can do what they have done. But the
association is apolitical. It has members on the left and on the
right. Imagine if we did an exhibition praising the settlements."
Mr. Segal and Mr. Weizman, in turn, said they were surprised by what
they called the association's "extreme reaction."
"We were picked in a competition of 10 firms of architects," Mr. Segal
said by telephone from Tel Aviv. "We suggested the theme and even
mentioned some of the writers who would contribute to the catalog, so
they knew ahead. But when they saw the whole work, they suddenly got
cold feet and didn't want it."
The architects have won strong support from Esther Zandberg, the
architecture critic of Haaretz, an independent daily, who accused the
association of exercising "harsh political censorship."
continued at: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/10/arts/design/10ARCH.html