Razi Khader
Amid the popular mobilization of the first Intifada, a group of young scholars from the Hebron Polytechnic, decided to focus their attention on the urban fabric and residences of Hebron’s Old City. Through architectural conservation, the Hebron University Graduates Union (UGU) invested dilapidated structures with architectural values that foster their position as cultural assets. In 1995, this conservation project was endorsed by the Palestinian Authority and led to the transformation of the grassroots UGU into the semi-governmental Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC). The high technical abilities and rigorous professional interventions of the HRC won the highest international recognition, first with the Aga Khan Award for Islamic Architecture in 1998, and two decades later, with the declaration of the Old City as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
This paper explores HRC’s post-Oslo shift towards the global frameworks of the Aga Khan award and ultimately UNESCO’s World Heritage. I argue that this transition entails a shift from the modest external funds allocated to the UGU into a full-blown transnational market and finance, thus accelerating and systemizing heritage management. From this financial perspective, the PA’s endorsement of this project was not only a diplomatic achievement but also a financial opportunity. It allowed the HRC to participate in the global heritage market by including its rehabilitation project in a national framework, hence eligible candidate for the UNESCO World Heritage List. I examine how the HRC’s venture onto these global grounds swept Hebron’s Old City into the neoliberal market of heritage and heritage tourism, moreover, how this transnational finance and management affected the tools and dialectics of heritage making in Hebron’s Old City.
I explore how HRC’s rehabilitation project was economically, ethicaly, and aesthetically realized. First, I examine the conservation praxis through HRC’s architectural practice as the catalyst for the diplomatic approach to heritage market. Second, I draw on primary documents of the HRC and its publicationsc to analyse the heritage discourse and management, leading to the nomination of Old Hebron to UNESCO’s World Heritage list.
Razi Khader has a B.Sc in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion, where they graduated summa cum laude. They are currently working on their master’s thesis on the architectural conservation project of Old Hebron, Palestine. Razi has presented papers in national and international conferences, such as the 2021 European Architectural History Network Thematic Conference. Razi and their research earned the dean’s excellence award and the Li Ka Shing Fellowship. Razi is also a secondary teacher and assistant in a history, theory, and criticism course on architecture in Israel in the 20th and 21st century.