An Analysis of the Similarities Between Italian Fascist and Zionist Colonial Plans | 2022

The founding of the Zionist state on ethnically cleansed Palestinian land in 1948 and the final plan for the Fascist Italian colonial city of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia in 1938 were implemented within a decade of each other. At that time, European powers still controlled large swaths of territory in Asia and Africa. The means for securing power over the occupied—the Palestinians and the Ethiopians, respectively—in both cases were manifold and would require far more space than is allotted in this essay to discuss, even if one were to simply focus on all architectural techniques of colonialism. One architectural method, however, stands out when comparing the plans for the Italian colonial city of Addis Ababa and Zionist projects throughout Palestine, especially in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem: the act of making the colonizer perpetually visible to the colonized, and the colonized invisible to the colonizer.

The similarities between the architectural implementations of these ideas in two different colonial contexts are indicative of shared justifications and reasons for both the Fascist Italians and the Zionists to colonize lands. The fascists and Zionists both described the lands they aspired to conquer as having no value, containing people without value (or no people at all, as falsely claimed by some Zionists),[1] that would become valuable once imbued with European civilization. It is important to trace the shared history of these ideas in order to understand the architectural techniques that were implemented as a result.

In the case of fascist Italy, Ethiopia was prized because of its “visible history” and social hierarchy reminiscent of feudalism; in particular, Addis Ababa was the desired capital of Italian-occupied Africa because it would allow Italy to better control the populations it now ruled throughout the continent.[2] However, to justify the implementation of an apartheid system that would subjugate and oppress the native Ethiopians, the Italians portrayed them as unintelligent, backward people. One of the ways in which the Italians tried to justify this was by maintaining that Ethiopian architecture and urban organization was haphazard and disorganized whereas Italian architecture, tracing its lineage to the supposedly “ordered” architecture of ancient Rome, demonstrated a higher level of civilization. Italians also pointed to what they perceived to be spontaneous, rather than deliberate, urban planning in Addis Ababa as further evidence that they were of a higher intelligence than the Ethiopians. (Figure 1)

Zionists, too, also tried to assert their superiority over Palestinians, but the arguments were not commonly based on architectural inferiority. It would have likely been difficult to make that case, especially considering that skilled Palestinian stone masons had built complex structures for centuries and that some Zionists aspired to appropriate ancient Palestinian stone architecture as their own national style.[3] So the Zionists chose to ignore it altogether, instead claiming that there was no true civilization to be found in Palestine. They argued that the land of Palestine itself was barren, and that it would take Zionist development on the land to “make the desert bloom.”[4] Once the occupation continued, and Palestinian houses, communities, and farms were destroyed during the ethnic cleansing operation preceding the founding of the Zionist state in 1948, much Palestinian land was left completely flattened. Some Zionists then took to claiming that the land that was just ethnically cleansed had always been barren desert, until the Zionists arrived and colonized it.[5]

This example of the erasure of Palestinian history is one aspect of the “visible occupier, invisible occupied” paradigm that both the Fascist Italians and Zionists sought to ensure. Historian Mia Fuller states that “being visible, for the Italian government, was equated with an act of power, with a direct exercise of cognitive dominance: the ‘concept’ was invoked, by means of architecture and city planning, of ‘acting upon the indigenous mentality, impressing it with the isolated grandeur of powers.’”[6] In other words, the cultural and architectural achievements of the colonized were hidden from the occupier as a method of maintaining their claimed superiority over the occupied. The colonized were also, through different architectural techniques, reminded of the power and presence of the colonizer with the intent of striking a sense of inferiority in the hearts of the oppressed.

In the fourth and final plan for the Italian colonial city of Addis Ababa, designed by architects Ignacio Guili and Cesare Valle, the governmental buildings were placed at the center of the urban plan. The government district was envisioned to be designed to have the grandeur of the Greek Acropolis; this grand plan was intended to “formally make evident the predominance of white over black.”[7] Though the native Ethiopians would not be allowed to enter the government district, one could imagine that they would be able to see such a large structure from a distance, and that the presence of this grand structure would keep in their minds the ostensible power of their occupiers.

Not that they would have likely needed many reminders of that in their daily lives. Though the plan was only partially realized, one ninth of the Ethiopians were removed from the part of the city they originally lived in and were forced to inhabit a new segregated quarter, with houses inspired by their traditional tukul but made of concrete instead of mud, grass, and wood.[8] The fact that their traditional housing was altered with new materials and methods of construction was perhaps enough a daily reminder of their occupier’s ability to forcibly change the way they have been living for generations, and a reminder of their occupier’s ostensible power over them.

In addition to constant visible reminders of their status as occupied, oppressed people, more subtle methods of “cognitive dominance” were utilized by Italian architects and planners against the Ethiopians. The layout of the new tukul houses, arranged in a checkerboard format, was designed to ensure optimal surveillance and control by the Italians.[9] The Ethiopians were also given ID cards that further aided in Italian surveillance of the native population.[10] It would not be very often, however, that Ethiopians would see Italians; aside from the commercial quarter, none of the spaces would be shared by whites and blacks as the law prevented such intermingling of races. The placement of the native quarter of Addis Ababa was designed to enforce that; as depicted in the plan itself (Figure 2), not only was it located in the periphery of the city and far from its center, but it was also placed behind a river that was hard to traverse and that, during the flood season, was especially dangerous and even fatal to cross through.[11] The architects thus prevented the natives from traversing the land they would have freely traversed before by engaging the river as an architectural participant in oppression.

The fact that the Ethiopians could not see their occupiers and oppressors—the people placing them in in foreign housing complexes within distant, easily surveyable quarters behind deadly rivers—due to the apartheid policies of the Italian government may have generated a sort of fear within them like those within a panopticon prison, who do not know when they are being watched and therefore assume they are always being watched. They do not know the qualities of their oppressor, or what their next plan is for them, or whether they are being surveilled. The lack of visibility is thus being employed to make the Ethiopians apprehensive of their future state and fearful of the occupier that oppresses them without being seen. This fear helps maintain the status quo of the Italians being superior to the Ethiopians.

The technique of imbuing the occupied with a sense of perpetually being watched is also utilized by the Zionists in their illegal West Bank settlements. Many of the settlements are placed on hilltops overlooking Palestinian villages. As more settlements are constructed, they begin to dominate the landscape view from the perspective of the Palestinians, so that when one looks one finds his or herself surrounded by their occupiers, perched on hilltops watching them. In most settlements, the houses themselves are oriented radially, with roads being traced directly to the hill’s topographical lines and spiraling away from the center.[12] Each house has a large balcony facing outwards, away from the hill, which further makes it easier for settlers or the Israeli army to monitor Palestinians. The effect is a sort of “suburban-scale optical surveillance device” enabled by architecture, as can be seen in Figure 3.[13]

This layout was supposedly implemented to monitor the activities of Palestinian resistance fighters. In practice, during the Second Intifada it became an excuse for Zionist soldiers to shoot at Palestinians who looked at settlement housing with binoculars or who were otherwise looking “suspiciously” at the houses. (In one case, a Zionist soldier was given authorization to shoot at a Palestinian who was standing on his roof, without binoculars or weaponry, near a settlement south of the Gaza Strip.)[14] In conjunction with Zionist watchtowers, which are a ubiquitous sight throughout occupied Palestine, it becomes clear that the intent is to recreate the sense of the panopticon prison, perhaps even more so than in the colonial city of Addis Ababa due to the greater number of colonial structures built around the occupied. This architectural technique is meant to make Palestinians feel like prisoners in their own land.[15]

The settlement house or community is far from the only architectural tool used by Zionists to suggest superiority over the occupied. Palestinian movement across the West Bank and Jerusalem is deliberately slowed down by numerous checkpoints, which contain turnstiles that allow only one Palestinian to enter at a time. The turnstiles themselves are roughly 20-35 centimeters narrower than the Israeli specification; this causes people of a larger stature, or mothers with young children, to get caught in the turnstile.[16] And even for people of an average stature, the turnstiles are still narrow enough that they press against the bodies of the Palestinians passing through, essentially treating them as mere bodies without humanity. It is another attempt by the oppressors to manifest their presence via as many means possible.

In 2005, the Qalandia Crossing that restricts travel between Jerusalem and Ramallah was updated by the Zionists, and exemplifies the sense of perpetual surveillance of Palestinians. The complex is a maze of metal fencing. As related in Hollow Land, “All commuters must go through five stages: the first set of turnstiles, the X-ray gates, the second set of turnstiles, the inspection booth and an X-ray machine for the bags. The entire process is captured by a dense network of cameras, and the passenger is given instructions via loudspeakers.”[17] The sense of constant surveillance already present in the settlements is furthered in the checkpoints, which many Palestinians cross through daily; it is another Zionist architectural technique to cognitively dominate Palestinians by suggesting a perpetual, oppressive presence watching their every move.

Both the Ethiopians and the Palestinians would feel watched by an enemy that was constricting their rights. However, the Fascist Italian approach as planned was arguably more subtle than that of the Zionists. Though one can speculate that the Ethiopians could see the Italian capitol building, which the Italians wanted to symbolize the superiority of white over black, from a distance, their view is not of a panorama of their oppressors as the view of a Palestinian seeing the surrounding settlements and watchtowers is. In Ethiopia, the Italians wanted to limit any contact between black and white. Therefore, the most tangible signs of Italian dominance over the Ethiopians were that they had to live in new kinds of houses and were separated from the rest of the city by a flood-prone river.

Meanwhile, Palestinians living in the West Bank or Jerusalem are constantly reminded of their occupier’s presence by the settler communities perched in the hills above them, the watchtowers that complement the settlements, and the checkpoints used to slow down their movement and further dehumanize them. (Not to mention the other non-architectural methods that Zionists use to oppress Palestinians, such as shooting at civilians and detaining innocent minors, among others—but those are not the subjects of this investigation.) Palestinians often see Zionist settlers or soldiers in these situations—they are not hidden, unlike in colonial Addis Ababa, where racial hierarchies were solidified by preventing contact between Italians and Ethiopians.

In addition to making the colonized feel perpetually watched, the Fascist Italians and Zionists tried to hide the colonized people from the views of the colonized. In the plan for Addis Ababa, white people would live closer to the center of the city and would have little need to traverse to the “native quarter” unless they needed something from their markets. To further this segregation, bus lines were created exclusively for whites to aid them in traversing the city,[18] and it was forbidden for whites and blacks to marry.[19] This, in addition to the creating of monumental architecture at the city’s center and more utilitarian huts for the natives, meant that there was little reason for whites to interact with blacks.

In the Zionist colonial context, the rendering of Palestinians as invisible to Israelis was executed by destroying evidence of Palestinian culture and claiming what remained as its own. As was previously related in the essay, Zionists sought to promote the idea that there was no real non-Jewish culture in Palestine prior to 1948, and one of the ways they did this was by decimating Palestinian villages, thus eliminating the evidence of a long-rooted Palestinian culture. However, the Zionists could not destroy the many, iconic stone structures that dot the old city of Jerusalem. So the Zionists adopted stone construction as being representative of their nation, despite pushes from other Zionist architects to have the modernist, concrete-clad style of architecture found in Tel Aviv as the Zionist project’s style.[20] The goal was that when Israelis peer at the cityscape of the Old City of Jerusalem, they do not see the works of an occupied culture that is centuries old but rather perceive some ancient Jewish style that remanifested itself after the founding of the Zionist state.

This distortion of Palestinian history through architecture continues today, with architects that are ostensibly not Zionists perpetuating this narrative. The National Library of Israel, designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron and which is still under construction, is located in Zionist-controlled Jerusalem and is situated between the Israel Museum to the south and the Knesset, or Israeli Parliament, to the east (Figure 4). Though the library is supposedly independent from the Zionist government, its positioning attempts to state that the center of Zionist thought, government, and learning is in Jerusalem. To blend with the landscape of the Old City of Jerusalem and claim it as a Zionist invention, the library employs a perforated stone façade placed over a precast concrete structure.[21]

The perforations are described as “deriv[ing] their shapes from a projection of erosions on the ancient stone walls of the Old City”[22]—which represents an act of architectural and cultural appropriation as it suggests that those stone walls, built almost entirely by Palestinian craftsmen, were in fact Jewish constructions. A visitor to the library is meant to connect the stone facades to the cityscape of the Old City and make this conclusion. When an Israeli sees the cityscape they are not meant to see Palestinian culture; their contributions are hidden, and are falsely attributed to Zionists.

It may seem that the methods of achieving cognitive domination used by the Zionists are more comprehensive than those utilized by the Fascist Italians. This is attributable to the fact that the Zionists have had more than 70 years of experience in establishing apartheid, whereas the plan for the colonial city of Addis Ababa went through only four iterations and was never fully realized. If the focus of the essay were to be widened on other Fascist Italian colonial projects such as those in Libya one may be able to find more specific details on the way the native population was harmed by the Italians through an “occupier visible, occupied invisible” paradigm.

The reader may also question why case studies were not presented in Gaza, and that is because the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem present a slightly different architecture of oppression than in Gaza. The West Bank and Jerusalem are an evolution of the colonial city in which a group of colonizers live next to but subjugate the colonized, a typology that is also represented by the colonial plan for Addis Ababa. The Gaza Strip is an open-air prison camp where Palestinians exclusively are left to suffer in an incremental genocide. An investigation into architectural precedents similar to the current-day Gaza Strip would also be illuminating, and it is a topic I seek to address in the future.

Much of what has been related about the architectural interventions used to oppress colonized people is not new information: they are the daily realities of Palestinians, and whatever was built of the Ethiopian “native quarter” was also the daily reality of Ethiopians during the Italian occupation. It is likely that almost every Palestinian living in the Zionist-occupied territories will relate the same story of occupation and oppression that was discussed here. The goal of this essay is not to present the findings as individual discoveries but rather to show that the strategies of colonialism, apartheid, and oppression, as varied as they may be, all have a common root. This root is the goal to render the occupier and their race as superior and omnipresent and to render the occupied and their race as inferior and invisible. By relating this goal that underpins Zionism, Fascist Italy, and other colonial forces throughout history, and by studying how that goal manifested different architectural techniques depending on the context, I hope to foster a larger discussion on how these tactics can be countered. The tools that the architects of apartheid wield are well-documented; it is my goal to analyze that information and from that analysis determine what the essence of the architecture of resistance, the architecture of liberation from the colonizer, the architecture of equality, would look like: in the Palestinian context and in any context in which an oppressed group seeks liberation from the colonized. 

Bibliography

Said, Edward Wadie. The Question of Palestine. New York City, NY: Vintage Books, 1992.

Fuller, Mia. “Wherever You Go, There You Are: Fascist Plans for the Colonial City of Addis Ababa and the Colonizing Suburb of EUR ’42.” Journal of Contemporary History 31, no. 2 (1996): 397–418. http://www.jstor.org/stable/261172.

Abusaada, Nadi. “Jerusalem Stone: The History and Identity of Palestinian Stereotomy.” Architectural Review, April 12, 2022. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/city-portraits/jerusalem-stone-the-history-and-identity-of-palestinian-stereotomy.

Fuller, Mia. Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities and Italian Imperialism. London: Routledge, 2007.

Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso Books, 2017.

da Sousa, Ana, dir. Israel: The Architecture of Violence, Rebel Architecture (Al Jazeera, 2014), https://www.aljazeera.com/program/rebel-architecture/2014/9/2/israel-the-architecture-of-violence

Barak, On. “Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (Reviewed by On Barak).” The Arab Studies Journal 18, no. 1 (2010): 402–6. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27934104.

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[1] Edward Wadie Said, The Question of Palestine (New York City, NY: Vintage Books, 1992), 9.

[2] Mia Fuller, “Wherever You Go, There You Are: Fascist Plans for the Colonial City of Addis Ababa and the Colonizing Suburb of EUR ’42,” Journal of Contemporary History 31, no. 2 (1996): 402, http://www.jstor.org/stable/261172.

[3] Nadi Abusaada, “Jerusalem Stone: The History and Identity of Palestinian Stereotomy,” Architectural Review, April 12, 2022, https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/city-portraits/jerusalem-stone-the-history-and-identity-of-palestinian-stereotomy.

[4] Said, The Question of Palestine, 12.

[5] Said, The Question of Palestine, 14.

[6] Fuller, “Wherever You Go,” 402.

[7] Fuller, “Wherever You Go,” 406.

[8] Mia Fuller, Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities and Italian Imperialism (London: Routledge, 2007), 208.

[9] Fuller, Moderns Abroad, 210.

[10] Fuller, Moderns Abroad, 210.

[11] Fuller, Moderns Abroad, 207.

[12] Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso Books, 2017) , 132-133.

[13] Israel: The Architecture of Violence, Rebel Architecture, directed by Ana da Sousa (Al Jazeera, 2014), https://www.aljazeera.com/program/rebel-architecture/2014/9/2/israel-the-architecture-of-violence

[14] Weizman, Hollow Land, 133.

[15] On Barak, “Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (Reviewed by On Barak),” The Arab Studies Journal 18, no. 1 (2010): 404, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27934104.

[16] Weizman, Hollow Land, 151.

[17] Weizman, Hollow Land, 151.

[18] Fuller, “Wherever You Go,” 405.

[19] Fuller, Moderns Abroad, 199.

[20] Abusaada, “Jerusalem Stone.”

[21] Abusaada, “Jersualem Stone.”

[22] Abusaada, “Jersualem Stone.”