The Unlikely Ascent of Palestine’s Green Architects

Amid a stalled peace progress and an increasingly hopeless political atmosphere, a growing number of young Palestinians are betting that they can design their way into a better future. In Ramallah, the de-facto Palestinian capital, young designers are making furniture out of trash in hopes of reducing landfill waste while increasing their country’s self-reliance. In East Jerusalem, Jews and Palestinians are working together to provide basic services to a Jerusalem neighborhood that ended up on the wrong side of the Israeli separation barriers. In villages across the region, people are working to preserve and reintroduce life to traditional Arab villages, even as the country begins its first stab at a planned California-style development. Middle-East based journalist Joseph Dana talks to these proactive architects and designers to find out how Palestine’s unlikely sustainability movement came into being — and where it is likely to go.