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From a Distance
Daniel Orenstein
 LIKE HAVING THE WINDOW SEAT: A German plane flies above the Jezreel Valley in 1918 |
(January 3, 2000)A comparative album of photos of Israel from the air provides striking glimpses of both the past and future of our land. But it also shows the holes in Zionist and Palestinian propaganda.
From the turn of the century to the early 1990s, the Zionist revolution transformed the face of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Swamps were drained, forests were planted and cities were built on sand dunes. These developments were rightly considered crucial for the creation and stabilization of an independ-ent Jewish state. But over the last decade, it is nature and open spaces, rather than cities and roads, that are in short supply. Urbanization has been accelerating at a head-spinning pace, encouraged by a multitude of socioeconomic trends like the large-scale transfer of agricultural land to building, new societal preferences for single-family homes, exclusive neighborhoods and suburban shopping malls, routine violations of zoning and building laws, a sharp increase in road construction and, above all, a population rapidly growing in numbers and affluence.
As Israelis debate the merits and costs of a perpetually growing population (see this issue�s special report on demographics), Hebrew University historian Benjamin Z. Kedar has provided us with a beautifully illustrated glimpse into our past with his book "The Changing Land -- Between the Jordan and the Sea." This glimpse gives us a wonderfully instructive tool for analyzing the aforementioned changes and may provide us with important insight into our future.
The book takes as its baseline a collection of World War I aerial photographs from British, German, Australian and Israeli archives, as well as private collections, gathered and selected by Kedar. Intrigued from his youth by the story of how Tel Aviv was built on a sand dune, Kedar set out to match each one of the vintage photos with equivalent shots from the 1940s (to capture the situation at the close of the British Mandate) and the late 1960s (the situation at the end of Jordanian and Egyptian rule over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, respectively), and with photos that Kedar himself commissioned in the 1990s.
Kedar�s stated aim is "to allow the reader to confront, through the visual texts proferred by aerial photography, some of the physical changes that took place during this stormy century in a number of localities throughout the country." To do so, he carefully chose 70 of the thousands of available World War I photos, using three guidelines: to display the main contrasts between then and now; to include as many of Israel�s regions as possible, and to choose pictures that include a natural or man-made feature that has not changed much between 1917-18 and the present. "These constants," Kedar explains, "provide a convenient starting point for the do-it-yourself exercises in visual history here proposed, especially for readers unfamiliar with aerial photographs."
The result of his labors is a work that appeals on so many levels - aesthetic, historical and environmental, to name just three - that readers of all stripes will pore over the pages in fascination, hour after hour.
On an aesthetic level, upon opening the book the reader feels the satisfaction and awe of a first-time flier who has successfully jockeyed for the airplane window seat or a hiker who has spent the better part of a day climbing to a mountain peak just to stare at the panorama below. One can marvel at the unique shapes within which Israel�s main cities developed, each bounded by its own topographical constraints. Or the reader can compare the rigidly linear agricultural and residential patterns of Jewish settlements to the randomly organized Arab villages and fields.
And this is all before engaging the book for its comparative then-and-now value. Indeed, it was only after the initial thrill of identifying my own former dwellings in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Beersheba, and finding my current apartment in Rehovot, in shots taken from thousands of feet in the air, that I began to compare the 1917-18 pictures to those of today.
The book�s historical appeal derives from Kedar�s documentation of the progress of the World War I battles for control of Palestine. He provides a historical analysis of how aerial photographs were produced and describes the role of the opposing air forces in the battle for Palestine and the role of aerial photo-reconnaissance in particular. He then tracks the progress of the Allied forces as they pushed the Germans and Turks northward, supplementing this story with documentation of the recollections and impressions of visitors to Palestine and of its Jewish and Arab residents.
While Kedar devotes most of his narrative to this period, he is also well aware of the historical implications of the photos he presents for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both within and beyond the 1967 borders. Here, for the most part, he chooses to let the pictures speak for themselves and states only his lofty aim that "these data may help us better confront, comprehend and come to terms with our recent history, now so befogged by selective, self-righteous, and often inflammatory �narratives.�"
Interestingly, all the parties to the conflict over land could use the pictures to further their agendas. While circa-World War I Palestine was significantly less populated than the same area is today, it was, as Kedar suggests, certainly no "land without a people," as Zionist propaganda would have us believe. However, the cities of Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem seem to have developed rather impressively under Israeli occupation, despite Palestinian propaganda that would have us believe otherwise. Rather than resolving political arguments, the photographs contribute a welcome new dimension to the already lively debates.
As for land-use changes, Kedar again refrains from providing interpretations of the changes observed through the photos, but he also rightly assumes that with some background in Israeli history, one can appreciate the photographs more. Therefore, he provides readers with just enough information to enable us to comprehend the changes we see before us, be it urban expansion, changes in agricultural practices or the change in the botanical landscape (we see, for example, Sha�ar Hagai barren in 1917; forested, by the early 90s, thanks to the efforts of the JNF; and then burned out in the wake of a 1995 fire).
And what of the urban sprawl mentioned above? Telling examples include Kedar�s 1994 pictures of Beersheba, Ashdod and Rishon Letzion - not to mention Israel�s three largest cities, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem - in which we see almost no "open spaces" larger than a modest city park amidst or at the edges of the built-up areas. What�s more, the photographs of cities taken two to five years ago that do show an urban-rural interface, including shots of Rehovot, Gederah and Afulah, are already in need of an update, as these cities are expanding drastically at the expense of the countryside.
Considering that the pace of urbanization is accelerating, that development is a uni-directional trend (seldom, if ever, is a built area returned to a natural state) and that healthy ecological systems from wetlands to woodlands require open land - and lots of it - it seems that modern Israel is forsaking its last bits of nature. Thus, while this book exquisitely illustrates where we have been and where we have come to, perhaps its most important contribution is the worrying glimpse it provides into where we are going.
Daniel Orenstein is a lecturer at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.
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