**3.2. Comparative Analysis**

Palestinian refugee camps hold the oldest refugee population in the world at the global center of religious, cultural, imperial, and geopolitical interests. In order to compare Dheisheh with other sites, we first need to trace the colonial origins of the refugee camp. The first camps created to regulate entire populations first appeared in European-controlled territories between the late 19th and the early 20th centuries with the intention to bulwark against potential rebellions. Those interned by the Belgians in the Congo and the Spanish in Cuba were indigenous peoples, a population without rights who were never granted citizenship by colonial authorities. The population interned by the British in South Africa was, in contrast, not made up of natives but rather of white Europeans from a former colonial power. The official justification for confining one hundred and twenty thousand Boers in camps was to protect those Boers who did not participate in the ongoing revolt. In spite of these "benevolent" intentions, more than twenty thousand non-combatant civilians died in the camps. Indeed, the concentration and confinement of a population within a small space is often justified by the will for a colonial power to "take care" of the internees.

As a form of rule, the socio-spatial typology of the camp is common among colonial histories: from the German colonization of what is now Namibia and the Italian concentration camps set up in Libya to the villages built in Algeria during the French occupation and those in Kenya by the English. However, it is not until the concentration camps built during the Second Boer War that we can glimpse what would later become a diffuse phenomenon: the use of camps to control citizens of the state. The internment of entire populations became Europe's "solution" not only to colonial resistance but, as occurred in the two world wars, to the waves of refugees and stateless peoples "back home." The first European concentration camps appeared in Holland to "welcome" Belgian refugees after the German invasion in 1914. After spreading to England, France, and beyond, by the thirties the internment camp seemed to be, in the words of Hannah Arendt, the only "country the world had to offer the stateless."

Colonial camps produced a new type of population, one perceived to be—by definition—hostile, and composed of undesirable, dangerous, suspicious individuals who needed to be kept under control simply because they belonged to a particular tribe, religion, or ethnicity. Yet it is in the basic transformation of a people into a population—a statistic to be governed—that we begin to see the possibility for extermination. It is in this historical context the two most extreme camp-forms of the twentieth century were created: the death factories of the Nazi *lagers* and the "new slavery" of the Soviet Gulags. Yet the effects of the camp did not remain confined within barriers and barbed wire, but pervaded the city. Disenfranchisement practices such as denationalization or the revocation of rights became common in France starting as early as 1915, in the Soviet Union starting in 1921, in Belgium in 1922, in Italy in 1926, and in Germany beginning in 1935. By diffusing exceptionalism throughout the space of society, the camp as an experimental form of governance has politically corroded the structural relationship citizens have with their state.

Photo: Luca Capuano with Carlo Favero.

The history of Palestinian Camps is fundamentally tied to this colonial history of camps. Among the most important nominations that signaled a turning point in the perception of World Heritage as a celebration of "positive human values" is the 1979 nomination of Auschwitz Birkenau, whose Statement of Significance reads:

The site is a key place of memory for the whole of humankind for the holocaust, racist policies and barbarism; it is a place of our collective memory of this dark chapter in the history of humanity, of transmission to younger generations and a sign of warning of the many threats and tragic consequences of extreme ideologies and denial of human dignity. Between the years 1942–1944 it became the main mass extermination camp where Jews were tortured and killed for their so-called racial origins. In addition to the mass murder of well over a million Jewish men, women and children, and tens of thousands of Polish victims, Auschwitz also served as a camp for the racial murder of thousands of Roma and Sinti and prisoners of several European nationalities.4

Similarly, the Island of Gorée is described as: "an exceptional testimony to one of the greatest tragedies in the history of human societies: the slave trade. The island of Gorée lies off the coast of Senegal, opposite Dakar. From the 15th to the 19th century, it was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast. Ruled in succession by the Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French, its architecture is characterized by the contrast between the grim slave-quarters and the elegant houses of the slave traders. Today it continues to serve as a reminder of human exploitation and as a sanctuary for reconciliation."<sup>5</sup>

In both of these cases, nominated under Criteria VI as associative "evidence," World Heritage becomes a way of dealing with the world's most heinous crimes and events. Both Auschwitz Birkenau and Gorée serve as interesting comparisons to Dheisheh. Like both cases, Dheisheh is the site of a crime, yet one for which the time of reconciliation and commemoration has not yet arrived. It is therefore important to emphasize the cultural dimension of the nomination, the culture of exile.

Dheisheh also contains the expression of resistance as both materially and immaterially significant, similar to the site of Le Morne in Mauritius, which serves as: "an exceptional testimony to maroonage or resistance to slavery in terms of the mountain being used as a fortress to shelter escaped slaves, with physical and oral evidence to support that use. The dramatic form of the mountain, the heroic nature of the resistance it sheltered, and the longevity of the oral traditions associated with the maroons, has made Le Morne a symbol of slaves' fight for freedom, their suffering, and their sacrifice."6

<sup>4</sup> The committee accepted the nomination of Auschwitz Birkenau only on the basis that it would "restrict" the nomination of "similar sites" in the future. Regardless of the intention behind the restrictions, a precedent was set: reconciliatory sites would be few in number and the committee would attribute them to a singular event (rather than treat them as serial nominations). http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/31/

<sup>5</sup> http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/26

<sup>6</sup> http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1259

Photo: Luca Capuano with Carlo Favero.

Australian Convict Sites "illustrate an active phase in the occupation of colonial lands to the detriment of the Aboriginal peoples, and the process of creating a colonial population of European origin through the dialectic of punishment and transportation followed by forced labour and social

rehabilitation to the eventual social integration of convicts as settlers."<sup>7</sup> Both Dheisheh and the Australian convict sites are architectural ensembles illustrating forced displacement and imprisonment. However, they are not nominated for the culture that arose within them, but rather for the "living conditions" and the architectural exhibition of the development of punitive strategies on a global scale. While both serve a direct purpose for a colonial regime trying to expand, their productive mechanisms differ. In Dheisheh, people were removed to make room for the colonial apparatus, whereas in the convict sites people were transplanted to carry out its needs. Seen together, the two make up both sides of the settler-colonial coin: the British convicts became settlers, and the Palestinians became refugees.

In relation to Criteria IV as an "example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history," Dheisheh's urban form and its associated urbanism resonate with the city of Venice. According to its statement of Outstanding Universal Value, Venice has its origin in the "5th century when Venetian populations, to escape barbarian raids, found refuge on the sandy islands of Torcello, Jesolo and Malamocco. These temporary settlements gradually become permanent and the initial refuge of the land-dwelling peasants and fishermen become a maritime power."<sup>8</sup> Venice is further described as an "incomparable series of architectural ensembles ... and presents a complete typology of medieval architecture, whose exemplary value goes hand-in-hand with the outstanding character of an urban setting which has to adapt to the special requirements of the site." The urban fabric of Dheisheh contains the oldest living traces of contemporary refugeehood and represents a radical urbanism that emerged through years of political exception. It is an expression of the creativity and resistance of millions of women and men to the unique political conditions of the site.


**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

© 2017 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

<sup>7</sup> http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1306

<sup>8</sup> http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/394/
