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 Part of the TRAFO series “Reconstructing Neighborhoods of War” By Howayda Al-HarithyDuring theJuly 2006 war, Israel targeted various sites across Lebanon, including the southerntown of Bint Jbeil. Institutions, infrastructure, and the tightly knitresidential fabric of Bint Jbeil were left heavily destroyed as a result of thewar. The following are excerpts from the chapter “The Politics of Identity:Construction in Post-War Reconstruction” (2010) that offer an overview of the reconstructionof the old neighbourhood in Bint Jbeil:[caption id="attachment_23459" align="alignnone" width="904"] Photo: Howayda Al-Harithy[/caption][T]heinitial vision for the reconstruction project was centred on the ‘opportunity’to build a new ‘ideal city’. Accordingly, the clearing of the site of the oldtown was ordered. […] The Municipality’s initiative was driven by the politicaldecision to bring the people back, to facilitate their return in a speedyfashion and to offer them an improved – not just rebuilt – environment. Thiswas politically motivated by the need to minimize the sacrifices made andmaximize the victory, a position that is rooted in the need to bring the peopleback to their villages and towns as part of the resistance strategy. … [T]thereconstruction process lacked a recovery strategy and coordination betweencentral government agencies, local actors and donors. This lack of coordinationwas most critical when it came to damage assessment and recovery plans. Twoinitial surveys were conducted in Bint Jbeil. The first was by Jihad al-Bina’,the reconstruction NGO of Hezbollah, and was intended to serve as the basis forfunding the iwa’, or compensation for temporary housing. The second wasby Majlis al-Janoub, the Council of the South, to be used as a basis for thecompensation of rebuilding financed by the donor country. The donor in BintJbeil was the government of Qatar, which had pledged 300 million dollarstowards post-war reconstruction in Lebanon (2010: 78).… When ourteam of volunteer experts arrived in Bint Jbeil, […] the stage was set for thelocally produced and managed reconstruction scenario which had already began toclear the entire site of the old town, despite all the damage assessmentsurveys. In our capacity as architects and planners, the team from theReconstruction Unit (RU) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) decided tointervene to save the old town with its distinctive vernacular architecture andurban fabric from total destruction, thus opening the debate on process andproduct, identity and resistance, memory and ownership. We actively engaged theMunicipality and decision-makers in a discussion to warn against the erasure ofmemory and to acknowledge the value of the old town as built heritage and asource of identity representative of the socio-economic network of itsresidents and a resource for cultural and economic value (2010: 79).A petition‘to save the heritage of the South’ was circulated in September 2006 to besigned by the public in support of efforts to halt demolition and save theheritage of the old town. The second objective was to raise awareness andmobilize the community by discussing the value of heritage in identityconstruction, preservation of social memory and sustainability of historiclandownership. The third was to convince stakeholders in the planning processto adopt the initiative for the protection of urban heritage. This groupincludes the donors (the Qatari government), the Municipality and home owners(2010: 80).According to these objectives,the team worked on multiple tracks:…The first was to establish contact with publicagencies and politicians who are critical in putting pressure on the Council ofthe South. It was extremely hard to operate outside the political machinery inBint Jbeil. &#160;The Council of the South grantedour team three weeks during which work was halted in the old town, to conduct oursurvey and documented the historic fabric and houses (2010: 80).The second track was to raise awareness about heritage and its value through meetings and interviews with the community at large and home owners in the old town in particular. Local partners were essential to this process. […] Efforts on this track resulted in a local movement to establish a new society devoted to heritage protection in Bint Jbeil (2010: 81-82).[caption id="attachment_23460" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Photo: Howayda Al-Harithy[/caption]… One ofthe most challenging aspects of this track was to reverse people’s concept of‘heritage’. Most thought heritage had to do with some distant past and culture,and thus the monuments and frozen icons that reference them. Some were evenconvinced that we were looking for archaeological ruins to preserve, and feltthreatened by a scheme that intended to bring forth a cultural heritage aliento them. Others debated heritage with us through the lens of the orientalmodel, an Arab city with walls and gates, which was never the morpho-typologyof Bint Jbeil or towns in Southern Lebanon where the urban settlements are opento the agricultural lands beyond. […] It took some time to convince some of thepeople that their vernacular architecture is a living heritage that can beprotected and at the same time upgraded. Theeconomic equation remained the dominant concern. To agree to restoration is tolose the full compensation and to fall into a category of much lesscompensation. The proposal was therefore to have the owners of the traditionalstone houses agree to restore their houses if offered the full compensation of$40,000. Here, the Qataris, as the main funding source, needed to approve sucha proposal.… The thirdtrack included surveying and documenting the historic fabric as well asproposing a protection and revitalization plan that addressed socio- economicneeds. A team from AUB and the Lebanese University was formed to conduct thesurvey in October 2006 […] On the basis of the survey results, a report wasprepared by the RU task team and presented to the Council of the South. Thereport, which was entitled ‘Preliminary Survey of the Architectural Heritage ofthe Old City’, was also presented to Bint Jbeil Municipality. The stone housesthat were deemed of value and restorable were documented, mapped and clusteredinto a protected area. […] The cluster notion was important given theoverlapping cellular structure of the old town (2010: 84).In parallel, the RU teamconducted a design studio at AUB that proposed a masterplan for thesocio-economic revitalization of the old town. The students interacted withlocal officials and documented the stories of the residents through which the history of Bint Jbeil was constructed andvisions were framed. The locals narrated the town through memories ofsocial events and cultural festivals in private and public open spaces.They saw inthe reconstruction project an opportunity to change the reality on the groundand to build larger and better serviced homes. These narratives of memory,identity and ownership reveal the dialectic discourse that produces the ‘builtheritage’. They are authored by different social groups and stand in aninteresting comparison to the parallel process that produced the built heritageagainst the identity of Bint Jbeil (2010: 89).… Theprocess that negotiated a master plan aimed at restoring the old fabric andhistoric buildings revealed a contested identity for both community and place.It is most evident in the selective editing and manner with which history isconstructed that memories are recalled and visions are framed. As we approachedthe project closer, it also became evident that the old town is a changingsocial landscape. Only 30 per cent of it was lived in by permanent residentsbefore the war. (2010: 90)… [T]heQataris, through negotiations with the technical office, finally committed topaying full compensation to the owners of stone houses that were partiallydemolished and were designated as part of the vernacular heritage to beprotected. The technical office had surveyed and documented 134 stone houses torecommend to the Qataris for restoration. By 13 March 2008 the Qataris adoptedninety from the list. But the threat of demolition continued due to the lack ofproper management of the project. New construction was beginning in the oldtown and the same bulldozers were back at work, this time to clear the rubblefor the new buildings to be erected. Not freezing new construction around theclusters of houses to be restored jeopardized all the efforts to restore them(2010: 93).This process of post-war reconstruction showed that actors involved in protecting and revitalizing the historic centre were actively engaged in producing new meanings to the built heritage at the intersection of identity construction and post-war reconstruction. As such, acts of destruction and rebuilding are understood as processes of identity construction by those who dwell, build, rebuild, represent, and interpret.Reference and Further ReadingAl-Harithy, H. (2010). The Politics of Identity Reconstruction inPost-War Reconstruction, in Lessons in Post-war Reconstruction: Case Studiesfrom Lebanon in the Aftermath of the 2006 War, edited by H. Al-Harithy. Londonand New York: Routledge, 71-99.Howayda Al-Harithy is Professor of Architecture at the American University of Beirut. She obtained a Bachelor of Architecture from the Oregon School of Design (1985), a Master of Science in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1987) and a PhD in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University (1992). She joined AUB in 1994 and served as Chair of the Department of Architecture &#38; Design from 2003 to 2006 and from 2009 to 2012. She was also a visiting professor at Harvard University, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at Georgetown University.Further articles in the series “Reconstructing Neighborhoods of War” on TRAFO:Birgit Schäbler,&#160;Introduction: The Importance of Being Earnest About Neighborhoods, 28 August 2019.Kevin Mazur,&#160;Not Just Neo-Liberalism: Spontaneous Settlement and Violent Conflict in Homs, Syria, 4 September 2019.Mazen Haidar,&#160;Neighbors at War in 1975-77 Beirut,&#160;11 September 2019.Piotr Korduba,&#160;The Reconstruction of Warsaw: Between Abhorrence and Acceptance, 18 September 2019.Paul Sigel,&#160;“More Beautiful than Ever Before!” Neighborhood-Rebuilding in Divided Germany as Political Propaganda during the Cold War, 25 September 2019.Allam Al-Kazei,&#160;Beyond the Atomic Bombing: The Revival of Hiroshima’s Neighborhoods, 2 October 2019.Mohammad Hassan Khani,&#160;War Emigration and its Impact on Post-War Reconstruction of Neighborhoods: A Case Study of Khorramshahr after the Iran-Iraq War, 17 October 2019.Namariq Al-Rawi,&#160;Baghdad Neighborhoods: Processes of Resilience against the Internally-reflected Conflict of 2006–2008, 24 October 2019.Kefah Ahmed M. Najjar,&#160;Youth Teams and Reconstruction, 7 November 2019.Zoya Masoud,&#160;A Treasure of Heritage for the Poor of Aleppo: Neighborhoods between the Hammer of Political Insecurity and the Anvil of Warlords, 14 November 2019.M. Wesam Al Asali, Majida Malo, and Iyass Shahin,&#160;Informality for Reconstruction: A Possible Partnership, 21 November 2019.Mamoun Fansa,&#160;Post-conflict Analysis and Post-war Reconstruction Strategies: Sociopolitical Considerations Using the Old City of Aleppo as an Example, 12 December 2019.Kai Vöckler,&#160;Post-Conflict Cities and Neighborhoods, 27 December 2019.Arshi Javid, Texture of Loss: Tapestry of a Withered Neighborhood from Kashmir, 9 January 2020.John Hanna, The Space of Literature and Lebanese Wars, 30 January 2020.Mona Fawaz and Nada Moumtaz, Neighborhoods as Propertied Landscapes: Lessons from Beirut’s Reconstructions, 4 February 2020.Eric Lob, The Promise and Politicization of  Post-War Reconstruction in Haret Hreik, 18 February 2020.Citation: Howayda Al-Harithy, Re-Constructing the Historic Neighbourhood in Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, after the 2006 War, in: TRAFO  – Blog for  Transregional Research, 13.03.2020,  https://trafo.hypotheses.org/23458.   