Our project began with the discovery that—mistakenly or intentionally—the building
was not built beside the border, but rather, that the border runs right through the
building. Following DAAR’s methodology, which attempts to exploit opportunities
found within colonial separations, our project seeks both to de-territorialize and
re-activate this legal anomaly.
Upon discovering that the Israeli imposed Jerusalem border passes through the
Parliament, it became clear that the building is sitting, paradoxically, within three
different spaces: part within Israeli territory, part within Palestinian controlled
territory, and a small strip, no larger than the line’s thickness, exists in a legal and
sovereign limbo—potentially an extraterritorial zone. Thus we seek to reimagine the
building, and its politically and legally suspended status, as an assembly that is able
to represent all Palestinians: those living in Israel, under its occupation, and in exile.
The activation of an assembly in a legal and political void constitutes a way of
thinking and rethinking a space of relationality, horizontality and shared liberation on
which colonial reason and the expropriators of the common have built their fortunes.

Photo Carina Ottimo