The poster above features an aerial shot of Dalieh, the little known big brother of the famed Raouche Rocks, just left of it.
The poster reads roughly: “Get your construction site off of our Raouche” and was a produced by a group of architects, urbanists and activists trying to save this space, known as the Civil Campaign to Protect Dalieh.
The rocky Dalieh peninsula has been a public watering hole for decades…
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| Source: Civil Campaign to Protect Dalieh. |
….but now developers want turn it into a private luxury marina, accessible by the few who have means to pay.
It has natural caves and has been used by fishermen for generations:
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| Daily Star/Hasan Shabaan |
As one of the few public spaces on the coast, Dalieh has also been used for picnics and public festivals such as the annual Nowruz celebrations by the local Kurdish community:
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| Source: The Beirut Report |
But today the site is being fenced off:
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| Source: Civil Campaign to Protect Dalieh |
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| Source: Civil Campaign to Protect Dalieh |
The campaign has released some great vintage photos of people using the space:
On Sunday (tomorrow) at 3PM activists are holding a press conference to discuss their plans to oppose the project. You can join the event page here and show support by showing up. (Stay tuned to the page for upcoming events as well.)
You can also watch a talk by one of the organizers Abir Saksouk-Sasso at AUB this week. She looks at how the property was controversially transformed through various acts of legislation from a protected area to an area for development. And how a company affiliated with former prime minister Hariri has taken control of the space:
You can also read recent articles in The Daily Star and Al Akhbar English for background on Dalieh and the legal situation.
9 comments
I’d suggest you take a boat ride around the peninsula and take some photos, if you can bear the stench.
I actually did take a boat ride yesterday but I didn’t smell anything. In fact for the hundreds of people using the space every weekend there seemed to be relatively little garbage. Of course no public space would be free from garbage if there was not a system in place to pick it up or at least dispose of it. Why wouldn’t there be a municipal service to do that?