Horsh Beirut is the largest public park of Lebanon’s capital. Originally covering 1.25 million sqm of Beirut, the park’s green area is today reduced to a triangle of 330,000 sqm only after years of abuse throughout history, from cutting trees to build the ships of Crusaders and Ottomans to the planning of roads and the construction of buildings in the past decades (some of them being built illegally on public property). While the World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 9 sqm of green public space per capita, in Beirut the ratio is not more than 0.8sqm. And today, despite the fact that the park is classified as a protected natural site since 1940 and is part of the general inventory of archaeological buildings and public landscapes, the municipality of Beirut recently took a serie of decisions that will lead to the destruction of its remaining green space, the latest being the construction of a military field hospital inside Horsh Beirut (plot 1925), which sparked outrage among the park’s neighbors and the civil society working on protecting public spaces. On 9 February 2017, hundreds of people gathered in protest in front of Horsh Beirut asking the municipality to stop its nibbling policy with banners reading “Horsh Beirut is a protected natural site. Keep your projects away from it”. The municipality of Beirut defended the project by saying that it is a temporary structure and that it is a basic need for the neighborhood, especially for Tariq El Jdideh, an underprivileged area facing the park. In an attempt of defiling the image of the campaign, it also claimed that “residents of neighborhoods around Horsh Beirut supported the construction of the hospital on the site, whereas activists against the project came from other areas”. Those claims were quickly proven wrong: In a press conference in march 2017, the Lebanese NGO Nahnoo revealed a petition of at least 150 signatures from the neighborhood’s residents against the project as it also launched an online petition that has received 1304 signatures since, and that would be presented to Beirut municipality after they exceed 2000 signatures. Nahnoo explained that the civil society is not against the hospital project but is against the site chosen for it as the construction of the hospital which already started on the park is illegal because Horsh Beirut is classified zone 9 non-aedificandi which means construction is strictly prohibited. Furthermore, history proved that in Lebanon nothing is temporary. In fact, while the municipality argues that the site where the construction takes place is a parking lot and that no trees would be cut, the initial master plan for Horsh Beirut as designed by “Ile-de-France” shows that the municipality was responsible of planting this area and that the parking was meant to be temporary. On the other hand, the hospital cost estimated to 1.2 million dollars for a simple hangar is not only overpriced, but will be spent from the municipality’s budget, the Egyptian grant being only medicines and staff. Instead, this budget could be spent on upgrading other hospitals of the same area such as the Barbir hospital. Following other demonstrations, the municipality of Beirut freezed the construction but due to political pressures, it came back on the decision only a week later (with 9 votes against the hospital v/s 13 in favor), allowing the site works to continue. |