Author(s)

JIHAD AWAD

Abstract

Despite the difficult situation in West bank, the Palestinians were able to, during the last three decades, preserve a huge part of their architectural heritage. This is mainly due to the notion that this issue was considered as an essential part of the struggle against occupation and necessary to preserve their identity. This paper will concentrate mainly on the conservation efforts and experience in West bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. It covers not only examples from major cities but also some important ones in the villages. Due to the special situation of being occupation, and the absence of a central authority responsible for heritage conservation, several entities were established and became involved in conservation, with diverse goals and approaches. Although it started during the last three decades, the Palestinian experience in conservation has received international recognition for some distinguished successful examples. It became in some cases a good reference for others outside Palestine. The main goal of this paper is to present the Palestinian experiment in conservation and to highlight the reasons behind the successful examples and find out the obstacles and difficulties in other cases. It shows that for the Palestinians preserving the architectural heritage became a part of their cultural resistance and efforts to maintain their national identity. This paper depends on a descriptive method based on publications and some site visits, in addition to direct contact with major institutions involved in heritage conservation in Palestine.

Keywords

conservation in Palestine, Heritage conservation, Palestinian architecture, Palestinian heritage