The journey from the end to a new beginning- reviving qalunya village

For 75 years, to this day, the Palestinian has suffered from murder, ethnic cleansing, and massacres committed against him. Villages were demolished and their people displaced, but we are generation after generation, so today it falls upon the architect to document the massacres and commemorate the struggle.
My project “The Journey from the End to a New Beginning,” which is reviving the village of Qalunya, Jerusalem District.
in my final project, Ichose what expresses my belonging to my homeland something that speaks about the history rooted in us, young and old, in which Ireconstructed one of the villages that the occupation wiped out from the map with its rifles.
I began my journey by studying the ongoing genocide in Palestine, researching the history of my village by stepping back in time to 1948 when the 1917 Balfour Declaration pledged support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. This historical
context is essential to understanding the plight of Palestinians. For more than 70 years, Palestinians have suffered displacement, restricted movement and lived under harsh conditions.
Moreover, in order to establish the Jewish state on Palestinian lands, and in order to achieve this, the Zionist movement committed several massacres against the Palestinians, destroying villages, displacing their people, and killing their people in cold blood.
Qalunya, was one of the villages that threatened the Zionists’ control over the Palestinian coastal cities, as ti was the only corridor linking Jerusalem to the Palestinian coastal cities. Therefore, ti was necessary and inevitable for the distruction of Qalunya to achieve control for the Zionist entity, and ti did not matter the blood that would be spilled or the massacres that would be committed against .ti the only crime people of Qalunya commited was their geographical location. Qalunya was one of the important villages due to its strategic location, as ti was a central village connecting the surrounding villages, such as Deir Yassin.
it was the place of the gathering of neighboring villages to provide food or to watch plays or to play football, as the village contained a football field, and the people of Qalonia used to present cultural plays ni the center of the country, and i was dis- tinguished by their cluture, education, sports, and agriculture. Every individual there had a dream, an ambition, and a life to complete in peace, but the dream was not completed.
in 1948 During the Nakba, people were forced to leave their homes, as the people of the village left for fear of the massacre that occurred in the neighboring village, Deir Yassin, in which the occupation committed a massacre in order to intimidate the neighboring villages. The people left the village without fighting.
But 14 mujahideen from the villages adjacent to the village confronted these unjust forces, and they did not stop until the land of Qalunya embraced their bodies and was saturated with their blood. The cowardly Zionist forces
struck the land of Qalunya with cannons, putting it dow to the ground. And they were not satisfied with that, but they set fire to the bodies of those heroes who confronted them so bravely, and they continued to burn a woman who was unable to leave her home due to her age, and they threw her body in a water well near her house
but here the question is, is it possible to separate the soul from the place and can spatial memory be erased? What is the role of architecture in Palestinian resistance ?
The idea of the project was a trip that reflects the story of the village and the martyrs, and even enables visitors to experience that story, live its details, and always be reminded them of the occupation’s massacres.
Ifirst restored the main road connecting Jerusalem to the coastal cities, which is located in the south of Qalunya. Then Ireturned the village streets to their original location and designed a ring road surrounding the old village center, the same
center that contained the village’s houses and its square. Iadded this ring road to indicate the importance of the center. This village and Ilinked this ring road to another road linking it to the main road between Jerusalem and the coastal cities, and thus those coming from Jerusalem can see this center and focus their attention on it.
Secondly, Idesigned a museum in the middle of the center, and an agricultural center with a seamless connection to the museum through an emotional memorial path that constitutes the journey that the visitor wil experience. The goal of the museum is to commemorate the village of Qalunya and praise the culture and education that the people of the village enjoyed, as the museum was located on the litral edge of the clif, ni the same village center where the villagers used to attend plays, in addition to the agricultural center where visitors can experience agriculture. The center contains agricultural lands that enhance the connection to the land. The visitor can learn agriculture and be connected to the land through agriculture, as our fathers did before us.
The journey begins in a huge square to let the visitor think its paved in black as a symbol of the fire that ate the village.
It contains a shallow water pool with a water well in the middle. The pool acts like a mirror so that the visitor sees his reflection in the mirror, so the journey begins at the end of everything, where the visitor puts himself in the place of the martyr and thinks deep down that he would not have been here fi it was not for these martyrs.
The pool is connected to 14 thin canals of water. tI is a metaphor for the fourteen martyrs, and the use of water asthe contrast of fire that devoured the bodies of our martyrs. These canals continue ni a water path ot pass under the museum, which is specially designed to reflect the experience of its visitors, to reach another water pool below the museum in the wide square, and in this pool, 14 water fountains rise u p , a symbol of the eternal life of the martyrs and their continuity in our memory and history, a s our martyrs are always alive. Then the water continues its path to the tinal destination, the agricultural center and agricultural terraces, which symbolizes the future. The arrival of the water to the agricultural terraces is a
symbol that the martyrs irrigated the earth with their pure blood, and if it not for spilled blood will not lead to a new future for the village.
This place symbolizes the new beginning of Qalunya and the continuity of life on this land. because On this landthere is what is worth living.
This project wil not be an end, but rather a new beginning, to display, learn and celebrate culture and heritage and strengthen the resistance of our people against what they are suffering.