Figure 3: The reconstruction of Haret Hreik: design options for improving the livability of the neighborhood. Beirut: AUB – Reconstruction Unit at ArD. Fawaz, M. and Ghandour, M. (eds.) (2007)

Land development eventually became a way to invest capital earned elsewhere (especially in Africa and/or the Arab Gulf), to consolidate and improve its value, and to earn social standing in the community for the provision of housing.

The neighborhood destroyed by the Israeli blitz in 2006 hence embodied the experiences of forced population displacements (civil war, Arab-Israeli conflict), circulation and consolidation of know-how in the making of urban spaces, networks of capital that connected the geography of the Lebanese civil war to extra-national contexts, social solidarities, etc. It is precisely this experience which is left-out by the reconstruction project that replaces the thick web of social relations formed and/or maintained during the historical phase of spatial production, with the private agency’s hierarchical organizational model of operation. This socio-historical aspect of space is currently being permanently erased through the postwar reconstruction project. Indeed, the centralized mode of operation in which Hezbollah’s Wa‘d is operating leaves little room for other actors to intervene. Taking the formal dimensions of the buildings as they stood in 2006 prior to their demolition, the agency has, as described above, established a completely different model of spatial production in which the entire interface between client/dweller and developer goes through the agency that is also responsible for all decisions regarding common building facilities. Moreover, the agency has also single-handedly developed the design guidelines implemented in the reconstruction of all public spaces (e.g. streets, sidewalks, etc.) in the neighborhood. Hence, the new neighborhood is exclusively produced by Hezbollah and it is in the modalities of this production process thatboundaries created by the war are consolidated.

The negation of the historic mode of production and the adoption of the boundaries of the buildings demolished by the Israeli air raids as the actual limits of the reconstruction project reveals an actual dismay/distaste for the pre-war fabric. This distaste is perhaps best revealed in the motto of the project –posted on the panels of every building and on magazine advertisements, that promises that Haret Hreik will be rebuilt more beautifully than it was: “nu‛amirouha ajmal mimma kanat”

Figure 4: An advertisement in Cedar Wing: the inflight magazine of Middle East Airline, AirLiban.                                    Issue #100, August-September 2007.

Needless to say, the motto carries an undertone of resistance; one that suggests that what was lost is not worth lamenting for since it will be recovered, albeit in a more beautiful form.[xv] of the project on its website suggest that this form is considered more beautiful mainly because of the new material finishes that will be applied on apartment blocks and streets that are still rebuilt with stringent spatial conditions and inadequate public facilities; but a critique of this approach is outside the scope of this essay.

Spatial erasure

Judging from the analysis of these two projects, it is possible to argue that reconstruction consolidates the geography of war and accepts its new timeline as fact. The two postwar reconstruction projects described in this essay are conceptualized in continuity with the war that delineates their geographic extent and marks the starting point of their respective histories. In this regard, the projects bear little resemblance to the pre-war fabric. In fact, anything prior to demolition is reduced to a reservoir of moments, selectively invoked to serve the interests of the new project, stripped from social and/or political significance. Economic entitlements are also dis-embedded of their social milieu and abstracted into shares and/or forms. Hence it is possible, indeed important, to speak of spatial erasure. It is an erasure that operates on the social, political, economic, legislative, and environmental dimensions of space. These dimensions are subdued to the consolidated, abstracted definition of space that the conquerors of the new space impose, namely that of capital –be it economic and/or political. In this re-formulation of space, both the Wa‘d and Solidere projects replace an existing social network of developers and/or property owners and users by a centralized network, that of the political party’s agencies in Haret Hreik and of neo-liberal capital in Beirut downtown. In both cases, individual claims are addressed to the newly established central authority on urban development (Wa‘d and/or Solidere), which replaces all other authority, whether traditional (familial, social) or non-traditional (government). The centralization of decision making breaks down social networks by marginalizing their holders and allowing production to happen in one form only: between individual (resident/ client-developer) and central privatized authority (Wa‛d/Solidere). The spatial entities defined by the projects eventually emerge as privatized spaces in the city, where the role of state authorities is –whether antagonistic or sympathetic– always that of a facilitator rather than an engaged public planning actor. Far from a process of healing the scars of war, this radical change in the characteristics of the ‘reconstructed’ neighborhoods positions reconstruction projects as a continuation and even a consolidation of the war-induced processes of change.

1.  Solidere, the Lebanese Company for the Development and Reconstruction of Beirut Central District, was established on the basis of Law 117 (issued Dec. 7, 1991) and founded in 1992. For more on the process, see Saree Makdisi, “Laying Claim to Beirut,” in Critical Inquiry 23 (Spring 1997), pp. 661-705.
2. Figures vary according to sources. The numbers we are listing are the latest we could obtain from the Wa‘d Public Relations office.
3. The writ of the 1991 regulation that allowed the establishment of the company, also enabled the transformation of individual property claims (whether actual property titles, rental, and/or otherwise) into shares that amount to two thirds of the company’s stock. The remaining third was opened for investors to bring capital and allow the company to operate. Shareholders in this category were Lebanese and Arab –the largest being Rafic Hariri. For more details on this process, see Joe Nasr and Eric Verdeil, “The Reconstruction of Beirut,” in Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Renata Holod, Attilio Petruccioli, and Andre Raymond, eds., The City in the Islamic World (Leyden: Brill, 2008) pp. 1116-1141
4. See Saree Makdisi, Laying Claim… op. cit.
5. See Yasser Elsheshtawy, ed., The Evolving Arab City, (London: Routledge, 2008).
6. Law 117/1991, the real estate company, modified the original formulation of the real-estate company in the Lebanese Planning Legislation (Loi de l’Urbanisme 1963) in order to account for the special demands made by the main investors of the private company. For more, see Saree Makdissi, Laying Claim… op.cit
7. See Suzanne Kassab “On two conceptions of globalization: the debate around the reconstruction of Beirut,” in Ayçe Oncu and Petra Weyland,eds., Space, Culture and Power: New identities in Globalizing Cities (London: Zed Books, 1997).
8. Howayda Al-Harithy, Muqarnas “Weaving Historical Narratives: Beirut’s Last Mamluk Monument,” Muqarnas 25: 215-230. 2008
9. Residents are consulted once in the process, at the stage before construction orders are issued.
10. It is expected that parliament approves soon the legislation put forth by the government in January 2007 which allows dwellers in Haret Hreik to rebuild their houses as they were in 2006, despite the fact that these apartment buildings do not conform to the Lebanese building law and the urban regulations of the area. In this absence of this text, Wa‘d is currently building without building permits and blaming its illegal activity of undue state delays. A large percentage of the compensations pledged by the national government to property owners in the aftermath of the 2006 war, that were to be used for the reconstruction of demolished apartments in Haret Hreik, has not been disbursed yet. While many property owners have received of the two promised installments, few have collected the two installments. Furthermore, in an area where property titles are commonly clouded with multiple inheritances and other issues, many property owners who have lost their homes have been caught in legal loopholes and hence unable to collect their compensations.
11. In moments of high political tension, the divergence between government and community translates into the criminalization of the neighborhood’s residents accused, for example–, by Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, of illegal building practices and hence condemnable. Refer to PM Saniora’s speech on May 7, 2007.
12. Decisions are taken behind two layers of closed doors, the first dictates Hezbollah political prerogatives (e.g. retaining a territorial base, limiting negotiations for a potential legalization of the reconstruction process, etc.) and the second works within the confines of Hezbollah’s prerogatives to bring the neighborhood up to what has repeatedly been described as “modern” and “built to standards”. Both operate by direct derogations of the dwellers who, even as they delegate all authority to the Party for reconstruction, seem hardly able to adopt any other position given the harsh set of legal, financial, and political constraints they face in this reconstruction
13. ee Marwan Ghandour and Mona Fawaz, “The Politicsof Space in Postwar Reconstruction Projects: Wa‘d and SOLIDERE,”paper presented at the Middle East Centre Conference, Negotiation of Space: The Politics of Destruction and Reconstruction in Lebanon, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford,(June 13-14, 2008).
14.  For displacement from South Lebanon, see Ali Faour, “The Migration of the Populations in South-Lebanon to Beirut,”Syrian Geographical Revue, Vol 6, pp 3-53. (1981). For war displacements, especially in the Christian community, see André Beaudoin and Robert Kasparian, La Population Déplacée au Liban 1975-1987. (Beirut: Université Saint Joseph, 1991)
15. This lack of appreciation of the pre-war spatial fabric, it should be pointed, is not restricted to Haret Hreik, but also extends to other areas in Lebanon destroyed during the 2006 war such as Bint Jbeil, Ayta el-Sha‘eb, and elsewhere where bulldozers cleared the rubble of the historical core as soon as the war ended, seeing in this postwar reconstruction an opportunity to redraw the historic core along new guidelines. A thorough description of these processes was provided in several presentations during City Debates 2007, Cities After Disasters: Filling the voids. Conference held at the American University of Beirut, May 8-12, 2007.