4. Settlements: Optical Urbanism
The first morning in Ramallah. I wake up and hasten to open the window. '\\'h:ot arc these elegant houses, Abu llazim?' I asked pointing at Jahal al T:owil, wluch overlooks Ramallah and Rirch. 'A settlement .. .' 1
I look out of the window and sec my death getting ncar:' Mt~~lil' /ldumim. /1dt~m Rroomlm;~ and
Olil'er C!Janarin, 2005
llmltl!lll'd /',J!t.rlinitlll
In 1978, a year after it came to power, the Likud government made an early attempt to transform the settlement project from an improvised undertaking into an elaborate state project. It decided to establish a city on the upper slopes of the Judean Desert of the West Bank, a few kilometres cast of Jerusalem, at a place where a makeshift 'workers camp' of twenty-three families had heen established some three years previously without formal government authorization hut with the active support of former Defence Minister Shimon Peres. 1 The government's decision to award the project of designing the city to Thomas Lcitersdorf, an architect and planner associated with the Liberal Party - then part of Likud - was meant to set a new architectural benchmark for the settlement project in the West Bank's mountain regions. Leitersdorf was an international architect. lie had been educated at the Architectural Association in London and began his career working with the Southern California 'glamour' architect Bill Pereira on suburban projects in places such as Orlando, Florida, on US military bases worldwide, and, among other things, on a city extension for Europeans in the Ivory Coast capital of Abidjan. In order to determine the settlement's location, Leitersdorf's team set up climate-measuring stations and conducted detailed topographical surveys of several hilltops. The hilltop finally chosen, 500 metres above sea level, was selected for
SETTLEMENTS: OPTICAL URBANISM
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