In 2007, I arrived back home to Ramallah from the US for the first time in seven years. The place had changed dramatically to the point where I could not recognize much of what I have known my entire childhood and adolescent life. Urbanization had taken off at full throttle, buildings had sprung up randomly and all over the place, streets were getting narrower and cars were jam-packed diffusing their fumes in the once-fresh air. A year later, I was tired of photo-shopping realities in my head: replacing old trees back to where they had stood for a hundred years, refining the endless green landscape, removing unflattering residential and commercial buildings that penetrated the earth for tens of meters and were erected tens of meters into the sky and created an eye-sore. I began a slow move into reality trying to make the best of it without being a victim to an insignificant past, as I now recognize it to be.
It is hard to describe Ramallah without making references to a certain old glory. Very few of the new generation knows much about the “City's” golden past: the rest know the very little they were told.
It is hard to ever show this town around to a visitor without ever making references to mundane realities long gone: from pointing out to that famous coiffure-shop who was frequented by the royal family that ruled during the 50s and 60s, to the history behind a certain shoe-shop, to once high-end stores that once embraced the once tree-lined narrow main road named after an ice-cream store. Buildings stand where “small forests” once stood, and a taxi-parking lot stands where a “grand hotel with a garden” once stood.
The Ramallah our generation experienced is so much different than the one our parents tell us of.
My own story with Ramallah starts in 1988, precisely the year I recall for a number of reasons despite having been less than five years of age.
1988 marked the peak of the Palestinian Intifada and civil unrest. My parents have intentionally separated us from the realities that were happening out on the streets which we were never allowed on unless accompanied by one of them. Till this day, Ramallah still smells of fresh grass, soot and burning tires to me and its building walls were a huge canopy to display endless graffiti rants and slogans. The occupation was being forced out of the body of the occupied. So in 1994, Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Front headed by Yasser Arafat decided to try a new deal: a peaceful coexistence of two states that recognize each other's right to exist.
At the time, very few foresaw that Ramallah, the small town which had served as a resort over 30 years before, would become the leading center of the modern-Palestinian economic as well as political activity.
By that time, the town had lost most of its attractions: High-end shops and “Pensions”/ Lodging apartments were replaced by ordinary work-spaces, all of its hotels have shut down and turned into private residences or shared apartments, its three movie theaters (including one owned by my family) closed down for business and only few of its once famous restaurants had survived.
Ramallah differs from other Palestinian towns and cities by its undefined modern heritage due to having been the primary target for internal immigration since the Oslo Accords, and the fact that the town is known to have a liberal demeanor due in part to its religious harmony. Also, the city is yet to formulate an urban heritage with its rapidly disappearing past as a village. The city has spent a substantial number of years resisting an inevitable urban movement and desperately protecting the past in face of urbanization. Yet, the shift towards urbanism in Ramallah has taken several sharp turns including exclusive communities which were becoming the norm plus the destruction of the green spots.
Few years into the peace accords, the town has shielded itself with what became known as the bubble. The Ramallah bubble of Palestinian wealth, elitism and prosperity was heavily inflated by [mostly] Western Media attempting to reflect on what could become of a peaceful Palestinian state in the future.
However, Ramallah could still provide an example to other Palestinian cities since it shares the same geo-political fate as other Palestinian cities most of which was determined in the wake of the Oslo Accords. Most of its current residents have brought their own cultural heritage with them to Ramallah, which could provide an example for a unified yet unique urban identity. Ramallah is simply a blank page providing endless possibilities for a much brighter future and an example to be followed through by other Palestinian Cities.
Challenges including: pre-set notions about the city, the exaggerated property values, Ramallah’s triplet (Beitunia, Ramallah, Bireh) and limited cooperation.
SDIPs
So what makes Ramallah an interesting case study? It is the transformation of Ramallah from a small Christian community and an agricultural village with an insignificant historical and religious distinction abruptly into an unplanned City that faces numerous challenges faced by most unplanned cities: an ever growing population and the fact that it had become the only Palestinian city that attracts internal immigration, facing urban problems such as pollution and despite its small and limited space, having created an internal segregated areas based on economic and social indicators.
For the most part, historically-planned cities in Palestine were laid down by one ruling power or another: Historically-recognized cities in the region such as Nablus, Hebron, Haifa and Jaffa were planned and laid down by one ruling power or another (from the Romans and onward). Ramallah was oversaturated by urban problems and growth and was slowly leaving its urbanized boundaries due to numerous reasons including socio-economic reasons as well as political reasons always playing a major role in limiting the Palestinian mobility across the small region.
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