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I do not see enough similarities to compare the two cases (as what had been done by Amanda Baillieu), that is, Zaha Hadid's comission in Azerbaijan and the criticism of architect's accepting work in the Israeli illegally occupied territories in Palestine. The criticism of the Azerbaijan job, as I understand it, mainly stems from naming the cultural centre after a former dictator. The development itself does not cause hardship for its people. I can only presume that if it had for example been called after the national flower and not after the former dictator, then it wouldn't have been seen as an issue for Zaha Hadid to accept the commision. However, the Palestinian problem has been a long standing problem that can be traced back to over half a century of forceful land occupation and the non implementation of decades of security council resolutions against Israel, and still is a problem that is causing and has caused generations of hardship and oppresion for the Palestinians. While there are other governments around the world that have been oppresive to it's people, and some goverments (who we may be more familliar with) that have supported illegal occupations/wars that has caused deaths of hundreds of thousands of women and children, architects who accept jobs in these other countries, in the majority of cases, do not work on projects that are on occupied land where the people have been forcefully driven out and prevented from entering again. If architect's start refusing jobs in China and Russia, then where do we then draw the line? Should architects then also refuse jobs from UK or the US? My point is that there is a fundamental difference between the case in Israel/Palestine and most other countries where some sort of political problem/dispute also exist that justifies the criticism of architects accepting commisions in Israel.

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