Jane's walk in Haifa • On the trees in supreme splendor • Dana Herzberg

Trees in supreme splendor - urban nature • Dana Herzberg

On Masada Street, in Hadar Haifa, there are two large ficus trees that cast generous shade and attract bats. The ficus trees, including the boulevard ficus, were brought to Israel by the British in the 20s and today they are an integral part of the unique atmosphere of well-known streets, such as Han Boulevard in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Boulevard in Jaffa. A few months ago I fell in love with the ficus tree at the corner of Masada andShmuel stairs.

The aerial roots of the ficus tree hang like macrame curtain threads. You can stand under it, look up and let the roots caress your head, before walking towards the cloud of cigarettes floating in the cafes down the sidewalk. Like receiving a blessing on the way.

The phrase "urban nature" indicates a contrast due to it being a planned nature. How did these trees get here? The ficus trees are not local and are problematic: they pollute and even penetrate the sewer pipes and through the embankments. I wanted to spark a conversation around the topic of local-non-local nature. Mostly I wanted women to be excited by this tree. I started researching the trees in the neighborhood: who planted them? And why these trees?

Tree tour as part of Jane's walks:
The Tree Tour in Hadar Alyon, which I led as part of the Jane Haifa Walks, was created as an invitation to observe the relationship between trees and the urban space. The Hadar neighborhood was designed as a "garden city" in a European concept of a place immersed in greenery with the resulting quality of life. From the beginning of the 20s, the Hadar Carmel Council dealt with planting and preserving trees and even with ecological questions such as: How can homeowners be encouraged to plant trees instead of flowers, which require more irrigation? The creativity and willingness of the committee inspires the residents of Hadar today. For example, in May 1930, at a meeting of the Hadar Carmel committee, an idea came up to create an annual competition in Lag BaOmer to declare "the most beautiful garden", as well as organize a weekly tour with a gardener to help the residents in their gardens.

The walk of the trees in Hadar combined an experiential observation with a perusal of archival documents, apparently meticulous, which warmed my heart:
Lists of trees for planting, local and non-local - olives on Balfour St., carobs on Jerusalem St. and gerbila on Herzl St. (the gerbila comes from Australia); Drawing of iron tree guards on behalf of the Technion; And a letter asking to collect the olives that ripened in Binyamin's garden lest the visitors run over them. A former resident of Hadar who participated in the tour said that in the early days of the neighborhood, it was customary to plant cypresses as a natural border that marked the plots of houses, and indeed we passed by a row of cypresses that survived in one of the yards at the descent of Shmuel's steps.

Urban nature and Jewish-Arab relations:
The research on urban nature in Hadar also revealed unexpected treasures about the dynamics between the local and the non-local in the broadest sense - about relations between Arabs and Jews in Haifa. For example: In 1929, the year of the events in Israel, the National Fund for Israel sent a reprimanding letter to the Hadar Carmel Committee regarding the employment of non-Jewish laborers in picking the fruit from the trees.
A year before, in the summer of 1928, Gan Binyamin was closed in the early evening due to security problems. The decision sparked opposition among the Jewish residents who wanted to "spend the summer evenings in the open air", instead of "remaining locked up in the stifling apartment". The documents require reading between the lines and mainly raise questions for further investigation regarding political pressures and their effect on the social relations between Jews and Arabs and also regarding the dynamics within each society in itself.

The Haifa Olive Road:
Later on in the tour, we went down to the corner of Ben Yehuda and Kassel streets, where I mentioned the "Haifaite Olive Road", which was launched following the announcement of the "Israeli Olive Road" in 2008, inspired by UNESCO. The Haifaite Olive Road also passes through Emek Zeytim Street, which used to be part of A vineyard of ancient olive trees. The olive is one of the trees of the Mediterranean forest, which is the typical plant form of the Carmel Range. On the municipality's website it is written: "The purpose of marking the olive road is to emphasize the message of peace, reconciliation, coexistence and intercultural dialogue between the various sectors in the country." And "...above all, it illustrates the special Haifa spirit, a spirit of tolerance, living together, mutual respect, brotherhood and peace among all the city's residents..."

At the same intersection I showed a postcard with a photo of an olive tree, which appeared in the '1948' exhibition at the Haifa City Museum. As a symbol of a deep-rooted Palestinian identity, the olive tree takes on a different image in the photographs of the Haifa artist Jafra Abu Zolof: her postcards, four in number, each slightly different, show it as a miniature pot purchased from Ikea - its bare roots are not planted in the ground. On the other side of the postcards, where the description of the image usually appears, is a text describing from the point of view of a Palestinian woman a memory of her grandmother, a memory that directly or indirectly alludes to the rift created by the Nakba. This intersection on the tour, where we looked at Emek Zeytim Street, which was purchased by the Zionist businessman Yitzhak Lieb Goldberg in the 20s, raises further questions about the border between Hadar Carmel and other neighborhoods and about our willingness to touch different narratives and examine the Haifa spirit in our hearts - because our hearts, like The documents contain different and contradictory memories.

The trees in the Technion garden:
We continued our walk to the Technion Garden (Hamedatech), where the dynamic between the local and the non-local is reflected in the connection between the trees and the architecture. The impressive structure of the Technion, designed by the German-Jewish architect Alexander Barwald and whose construction was completed in 1924, combines local and European motifs - arches and a jagged decoration on the roof, reminiscent of the Nablus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, together with the 'international' style of the years 30, evident in the small round windows above the tall rectangular windows in the symmetrical and wide building.

The parallel combination of local and non-local vegetation in the Technion Garden is evident in the local cypress trees and the imported Washington palms (originating in the southwestern United States) that were planted as an avenue at the beginning of the creation of the garden, an avenue that directed the gaze in a straight line to the harbor.
The thought of palm trees as a symbol that characterizes the Middle East (along with camels, for example) remains as an Orientalist relic in the Technion Garden and, unfortunately, on sun-drenched boulevards in various cities: palm trees do not provide shade when they are strung along the boulevard. The design of the landscape by trees that originate from another continent and that in nature do not grow at a distance from each other but rather densely in deserts points to cultural and political issues inherent in the design of urban nature in Haifa.

The Technion Garden has undergone many changes over the years. In 1930, the Foundation House was built on a large part of the garden, along Herzl Street, and in 1954 the second floor was built which blocked the view to the sea. Nevertheless, the Washingtonians planted by Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa during their only visit to Israel in 1923 aroused wonder and amusement. This is also important: getting to know the wealth of urban nature in its historical and social context. Einstein actually arrived in Israel following a trip of several months in Japan, where he gave a series of lectures on physics, at a time when he felt an anti-Semitic threat in Germany. Later, in the 30s, he immigrated to the USA, the birthplace of Washington.

Good energy and temperature regulation on Jerusalem Street:
On Jerusalem Street we noticed the pleasantness of walking on the shady and colorful street, thanks to the beautiful buildings, the trees and the flowers of the gerbila, the hibiscus and the bougainvillea climbing the cypresses. The good energy of the trees is present along the street as well as the temperature regulation they generate. That is why it was important for me to refer to the preservation and protection of the trees.

Forestry Ordinance:
Tens of thousands of trees of various types are planted in Haifa, all of them protected according to the Forestry Ordinance. According to a municipal by-law (for Haifa, 1978), it is forbidden to cut down or uproot trees without obtaining a permit from the forestry official, in municipal and private areas. The main threat to the trees is urban development. Many times, residents come across a tree that has been vandalized or cut down without prior knowledge and without the possibility of objecting, because the cutting and copying notices are published only on the complicated website of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in an inaccessible and unfriendly way. The municipality of Nahariya is the first in Israel to mark trees that are about to be cut down or moved in order to allow residents to protest. In March 2019, the municipality of Nahariya passed a procedure formulated together with the environmental association Adam Teva and Din. This is not only a "leap forward in the protection of the trees, but also in the participation of the public in the protection of its environment" (Advocate Eli Ben Ari, Atad's legal advisor). There is room to make a change here in Haifa as well. In addition, I have come across quite a few unfortunate cases of tree damage by unprofessional "gardeners" who do not know how to prune properly and give the impression that they do not care. Here, too, there is a need for quite a bit of outreach and knowledge transfer.

The complex experience of a public garden:
Our walk ended in Binyamin Garden, where I wanted to refer to the complex experience of a public garden, which creates a common space where pleasure and well-being are possible but also lack of control and threat. This tension is reflected in the archive documents of the Hadar Carmel Committee. In 1928, the committee contacted the police station in the neighborhood and claimed (in English) that Binyamin Garden had become a hiding place for thieves who begin their dubious activities in the dark and threaten the passers-by, this is in addition to the fact that the garden is a center of activity for drug dealers and other elements lacking values ​​that deteriorate into crime.

The historical regulations for those staying at Gan Binyamin:
In response to the security concern at Binyamin Garden, Mayor Hassan Shukri wrote to the Governor of the North District about the "Hadar HaCarmel Garden" and pointed to a new general order agreement, in which special night policemen will patrol the garden, in addition to a special guard that the Hadar HaCarmel Board will provide on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. It was also agreed that the committee would come up with regulations for the kindergarten. In the 1946 version, the instructions for visitors include a ban on smoking, photography and knitting on Shabbat and holidays.

In addition to these documents, I read in the ears of the travelers from the book Haifa Before and After 1948, edited by Mahmoud Yazbek and Yifat Weiss (2011), a general description of an Arab woman named Widad Rizk, who recounted her visits as a child to kindergarten with her grandmother and her friends in the 30s. So they used to sit on the benches, she and her grandmother and her friend who told stories. Vidad Rizk's general description of the world of leisure in the Binyamin Garden brought up personal memories in some of the female travelers on the tour, among other things about a doe who lived at the end of the garden, in a kind of isolated animal corner. Staying in the garden, like the walk of the trees in the highest splendor, allowed us to meet different places, entities and parts of the city that enrich the feeling of being in it everyday by touching the past.

The preparation of the walk and the research were fascinating for me, as was the interaction with the walkers, who, like me, felt excitement at the sight of the ficus tree. Reading the documents also gave them color and life. I left the tour with a longing for another tour, which I will ask to guide later, about urban nature and social politics in Haifa.

Dana Herzberg - a resident of Hadar and an instructor at the Society for the Protection of Nature [email protected]