The hilltop city of Rawabi is Qatar’s gift to the people of Palestine at a time of uncertainty
The road to Rawabi, Palestine’s first planned city, is similar to the entrance of an exclusive gated suburb without the gates. Carefully placed olive trees and rustic stones accent the smooth pavement lead to the real estate project. But Rawabi’s precarious location in the heart of the West Bank is impossible to conceal. Scars of Israel’s 44-year-old occupation litter the otherwise serene landscape surrounding the project.
The 20-minute drive north from Ramallah, the de-facto capital of the Occupied West Bank, to the new city is dotted with empty Israeli military checkpoints, eerie memorials of the bitter fighting of the Second Intifada (2000-05). Rawabi’s modest entrance is marked by a series of discreet signs, small enough that passing Israeli settlers can ignore the project’s existence altogether.
Rawabi is a break from the Palestinian urban past. Where once small villages tucked themselves neatly into arid mountainsides, Rawabi sits squarely on top of a mountain in a manner similar to Israeli settlement architecture. It is not only the similarity in planning that Rawabi has to Israeli colonial construction that has Palestinians worried, Rawabi has become a political chip in the constant battle of legitimacy that the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority is waging in the West Bank.
Primarily, Rawabi is used as evidence that the Palestinians are ready for foreign capital investment and statehood. However, the facts on the ground suggest that the two-state solution is all but dead given Israel’s accelerated pace of occupation entrenchment in the West Bank. For some Palestinians, Rawabi has come to represent, not progress, but the corruption and out of touch thinking which has lead to the dismal situation in Palestine.
The architecture of the project is decidedly Middle Eastern but not in a Palestinian way. The virtual models, which are handsomely displayed on iPads in Rawabi’s sales office, show a project best suited for Dubai or possibly the outskirts of Tel Aviv, not the placid rolling hills of Palestine.
Inside the Rawabi construction site hundreds of workers and city planners, each wearing carefully selected neon safety vests and helmets blazing Rawabi’s cheerful logo, are busy building over 5000 residential units spread across 23 neighbourhoods connected by commercial and business centres as well as parks and playgrounds. On clear days, the Mediterranean coast and the skyline of Tel Aviv glimmer in the distance along with the Israeli settlement of Atara, perched on an adjacent hilltop. The architecture of the project is decidedly Middle Eastern but not in a Palestinian way. The virtual models, which are handsomely displayed on iPads in Rawabi’s sales office, show a project best suited for Dubai or possibly the outskirts of Tel Aviv, not the placid rolling hills of Palestine.
Impossibly cut from a pristine mountaintop, Rawabi’s visual similarity to an Israeli settlement is undeniable. Palestinian cities are traditionally built into the landscape, using mountaintops for wind and element protection while Israeli settlements are placed on the very top of mountains for maximum visibility and security. For a society steeped in conservative values, Rawabi’s promise of a modern planned city, where young families can live, grow and work, is a 180-degree turn from what most Palestinians have come to expect in an urban environment.
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Joseph Dana is a journalist based in Jerusalem
