Paper short abstract:

Hiriya, Israel’s largest landfill, built on the ruins of an Arab village, is a symbol of neglect and environmental hazard. The waste infrastructure served as a political tool to loot natural assets and erase the heritage of weak habitants. It outlined the borderline between centre and periphery.

Paper long abstract:

Hiriya is Israel’s largest landfill. Located in the heart of the country, it became a symbol of stench, ugliness, and of Israel's environmental approach. The landfill started to function after the 1948 war near the destroyed Palestinian village of Al-Khairiya, whose residents were expelled, thus dramatically altering the landscape. Shortly before the establishment of the landfill, new Jewish immigrants, mostly from Islamic countries, settled in the area. The new landfill, theoretically modern and efficient, only led to neglect, distressing the lives of its neighbors and harming the surrounding nature. While the inhabitants next to the landfill had no choice but to leave, the greater area around continued to suffer for decades, becoming the metropolis’ backyard.

Hiriya joins global phenomena of settler-colonialism, in which infrastructure methods serve as political tools to loot the land and its assets. Emptied territories became the first world’s backyards while erasing the heritage of former inhabitants. Tel Aviv, the modern-cosmopolitan city, built urban infrastructures which oppressed and displaced weak communities, thus outlying the borderline between centre and periphery. The story however has a positive turn: after fifty years the landfill ceased operation, and a large park is under construction on its grounds. This process initiated the recovery of a damaged area, and led to social, environmental, and infrastructural recovery.

The research makes use of hitherto unexplored written and visual archival documents, and conducted within a broad theoretical framework of landscape research that draws on various complementary fields of knowledge such as history, cultural studies, and infrastructure.