1The conclusions of the survey of the three Palestinian towns of Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron go beyond a simple inventory. They combine those of the investigator who probes, records and notes, and those of the surveyor who spans the dimensions of both historical time and social space. They are thus valuable for architectural and urban planning research as much for knowledge of the ‘social territories’ of Palestine.

2I use the expression ‘social territories’, not the term ‘societies’, to point out how much Palestine is a whole that is cemented by its regional, territorial, social and political diversities, and by its local powers that are at the same time original, identifiable, relatively autonomous and yet articulated with each other. A ‘variety’ thanks to which Palestine is indeed a country and not an amalgam of territories. This is what this survey confirms and this is not the least of its qualities.

3A ‘plural unity’, therefore, a pluralist structure that is the antithesis of what we observe in societies governed by a single entity, the central and centralising State that reduces its own diversity, in short the modern State presented, and above all imposed, as the only framework guaranteeing the emergence and durability of Nations.

4Every society is structured according to vertical and horizontal dividing lines. The former allow the specificity of partners within a country to be identified: the territories of regional entities, local powers, variations in dialect, ways of life, production and so on. The second crosses the entire national space and class divisions emerge: dominant/dominated, rich/poor, bourgeois/proletarian and so on… Nothing new here, except that each country has its own ‘dosage’, its distribution, its proportions of vertical and horizontal cuts that give it its own framework, a sort of ID card essential for those who aspire to grasp the real identity of a society. What about Palestine? And what do these considerations have to do with the preface of a survey conducted by schools of architecture?

5Before answering this question, let us consider Palestine through this prism of vertical and horizontal dividing lines.

6Despite its relatively small surface area, Palestine shows a predominance of regional segments rather than class divisions, a majority of vertical cuts compared to horizontal ones: a multiplicity of clans, each with their own territorialities, local powers jealously preserved and defended. From these cuts, a characteristic appears, that of the physical and political configuration of the country. Embedded in this fabric, this weave of regions and powers, Palestine has for centuries had as many centres, as many pivotal towns as it has regions. Nablus is the centre of the ‘country’ of Jibâl Nabulus –the Nablus Mountains– while Hebron is the centre of Jibâl al‑Khalîl –the Hebron Mountains– and Bethlehem, the twin sister of Jerusalem, is one of the two inseparable epicentres of the region of the Holy City –al‑Quds.

7This articulation of pivotal towns within a land that for millennia has called itself ‘The Holy Land’ produced an original federalist structure long before the birth of so-called federal political systems. It is a political morphology that requires artful consensus management: preservation of the diversity of local regional powers and their allegiance to a power whose national legitimacy lies in the fact that it preserves and manages the articulation of local powers, that it always places itself at the meeting points between them and never at the heart of any one of them. Thus Palestine has always existed as a country with multiple centres, without this contradicting its existence as a single territory.

8This is the socio-political fabric of the country: an observation that is not to everyone’s taste, unsurprisingly. Are we in fact in the presence of a falsely united, fragmented country, unified only by the grace of opposition to Zionist colonisation, as some Israeli researchers claim? Or, on the contrary, was Palestine born of a colonial project that was started when the Ottoman Empire ended at the beginning of the 20th century? Could Zionism have ‘founded’ the Palestinian identity in a space that had till then been more of a magma of tribes and clans than a country? We can see the negationist appeal of these approaches. But it is not enough to contest them nor to come back to a debate as old as the Zionist colonial enterprise itself. It is necessary to answer them, to explain what I mean when I use the expression ‘unity of diversities’ to describe the country that is Palestine. In other words, where do we find the key, the determining element, of this unique and multiple personality?

9The answer is to be found first and foremost in an attribute, that of ‘Holy Land’, too often reduced to its religious dimension alone. The subject of sanctity is vast and I cannot discuss here the immense amount of work that has been devoted to it. I will therefore restrict myself to a few statements, a few proposals that I feel are essential to support what I am saying in this brief presentation.

10A Holy Land is not to be confused with its Holy Places alone. It is not enough for a land to have a Holy Place to be a Holy Land. Thus, the presence of the holy places of pilgrimage in Lourdes or in Fatima do not make a Holy Land of France or of Portugal. In fact, what distinguishes Palestine and its Holy Places is that it has a unique attribute. As the Holy Land of the three monotheisms, the only country on earth to enjoy the attribute of holiness for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Palestine has the dual quality of having the Holy Places and of sanctifying everything on its territory.

11This unique character, shared by the three religions of the Book, has, despite conflicts and conquests, consecrated a way of perceiving the religious by the children of this land. We Palestinians, Children of the Holy Land, have a very special relationship with religion. We consider ourselves, over and above our religious affiliations, as a ‘receptacle people’, a repository of all that has been revealed in our native land. I would like to add that this conviction is shared by Palestinians be they agnostic or atheist.

12In Palestine the relationship to religion is primarily through place rather than through the dogma of any of the three monotheisms. Many observers see this as a praiseworthy feature of our tolerance. Palestine is indeed plural and its tolerance is real, but it arises not from an acceptance of differences in belief but almost from a right of ownership, as if the three Revelations belonged to us.

13Born of this melting pot, and shaped by this conviction, this country is identified by its thousand‑year‑old polychromy. This is how it perceives itself and it would no longer exist as we know it if it were, one day, to become monochrome because of this or that flavour of fundamentalism…

14It is therefore clear where the ideological, historical, social and political roots of this Unity of Diversities lie.

15The survey published here thus takes on a vital aspect. It illustrates, through the inventory and physical survey of the sites of three pivotal towns of Palestine, the organisation of the spaces of each, the common styles of their historical architectures, the specific features of the monuments and buildings of each, the diverse unity of this country, this melting pot of fusions and specific features. I do not know if those who planned this survey, the students and professors who conducted it, realised this dimension of their work at the outset. Their work provides material evidence in support of the historical and cultural claim of a people struggling for the recognition of its historical rights. We thank them all here.

16A final request. An identical investigation in Jerusalem would be the crowning achievement of this research. For if there is one town, one epicentre for all the others, it is Jerusalem. It is the national capital of all Palestinian capitals, those that make Palestine what it is.