Anyone looking for pictures of Haifa in recent years would probably come across a photo of a white, pointy, oddly shaped skyscraper, overshadowing a humble mosque with a clock tower minaret, made of local sandstone. Often titled with some “Old Vs. New” cliché, this picture became the popular image of Haifa, ever since the building was erected in the early 2000s.
Straight out of Kevin Lynch’s ‘The Image of the City’, the architects of this building, which serves as the district government center, wanted to create a new landmark for the decaying port city. Naming it ‘The Sail Tower’, they shaped it in a form that, in their visual imagination, referred to Haifa’s maritime heritage.
Lynch referred to the term: imageability as “that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probably of evoking a strong image in any given observer”[1].
The new building’s imageability is undoubtedly high, but the mental image it evoked in most observers was not that of a sail. Perhaps its top-down nature, perhaps the lack of proportion to Haifa’s urban fabric, or maybe the fact that military metaphors are more relevant to our daily life than sailboats. Whatever the reason may be, the skyscraper was re-named by the public and is known to everyone as: ‘The Missile’.
The Grand Mosque
Al Jarina Mosque (مسجد الجرينة), also known as The Haifa Grand Mosque, is one of the few monuments that remained from the demolished Old City. The Mosque was built in the late 18th century. In 1901, the Ottomans added the clock-tower to the building. It is one of several similar towers that were built in honor of Sultan Abdul Hamid II in major towns in Palestine.
The parking lot
The iconic image of the two contrasting buildings requires perspective. The depth of the perspective is possible thanks to an urban void, in the form of a vast parking lot.
This area was once the heart of Haifa al Jadida (meaning New Haifa, in Arabic), the Ottoman walled city, which later became the Old-City, and the urban center of Haifa’s Arab community.
The old city was destroyed in a military operation called “Operation Shikmona” during the 1948 war. The demolition act excluded building of religious significance such as mosques and churches. Thus, the parking lot is bounded by a church on one side, and a mosque in the other.
This kind of parking lot is a non-official typology that can be found in other similarly demolished urban fabrics, such as the old cities of Lod and Ramleh. At their vicinity you can often find government buildings, designed to reflect power. Together they form the post-Nakba urban landscape.
A bit like the prickly-pear Sabra bushes in rural areas that imply the presence of a ruined Palestinian village, this combination of top-down buildings and vast parking lots with small stone monuments in their periphery, is often a sign of a scar from the 1948 war.
Map source: Ottoman Haifa, Aspects of the City, 1516-1918, (Haifa City Museum, 2009)
The image of the city
Before the 1948 war, Haifa’s population reached 140,000, of which 53% were Jews and 47% were Arab, and it was defined a “mixed city” in the UN partition plan. Today, the Arab communities form 12% of the city’s population (which is now 290,000 people).
Haifa still enjoys the image of a mixed city in the mainstream Israeli discourse and is often portrayed as a symbol of co-existence. But the picture is far from perfect. If we look at the image of The Missile towering above what is the city’s Grand Mosque and fail to see the problematic power relations it represents, we still have a long way to go.
Reality hits
Last night, a very non-metaphorical ballistic missile from Iran hit this area. The damages are still unclear, but it was stated in the media that both ‘The Sail Tower’ and Al Jarina Mosque are among the buildings that were affected by the blast. This is not the first missile-hit Haifa has endured since the beginning of this war, and I am sad to say, probably not the last.
On top of the physical impact of war, there are many indirect consequences: tension rises, polarity and minimizing human rights. On the other hand, these are also times when individuals and community can unite and prove solidarity.
The rehabilitation of the city after the war can be an opportunity to recognize older traumas and restore the urban fabric in a more sensitive and equitable way. A chance to make reality rather than an image.
[1] Kevin Lynch, The Image of The City,1960, pp.9