Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, Pages 29-30

Edna's Essays: An Israeli-American Traveler Along the American Way

By Any Other Name, It's Still Annexation

By Dr. Edna Homa Hunt

A short while ago, I had a telephone conversation with a longtime friend in Israel. She reported enthusiastically about her day-long visit and tour of old Jaffa, gushing joyfully at the colorfully artistic "restoration" of the old Arab houses and alleys. In her lively narrative, she pointedly reminded me of the magnificent transformation of the "dirty, narrow streets lined by poor Arab houses" into the hub of a "Bohemian" art bazaar for Jewish painters, sculptors and craftspeople. Noting that Jaffa has become an internationally known tourist destination, my friend said, "Everyone knows it's more chic to exhibit and sell one's creations among the shadows of arches than in the ordinary, 'square' shops of Dizengoff Street."

Somehow, this seemingly pedestrian conversation set off in me a tidal wave of anguish and anger! I found it incomprehensible that she failed to recognize the immorality of evicting people from their homes, for any reason! Worse than immoral is such expropriation—and without compensation or offer of alternatives—for the purpose of converting families' homes to art studios, galleries and shops. But this has been so from the very beginning.

From the instant of declaring its independence, the State of Israel spared no effort to oust non-Jews from their lands, to transfer those lands to Jewish hands, and to watch carefully that no gentile soiled, by ownership, this "redeemed" land.

For that overriding purpose of "redeeming the land" an extraordinary series of laws have been enacted since 1948. Indeed, it would be difficult to find another state in the "free world" whose laws, codes, regulations and procedures are as tarnished by agrarian racism as is the system of land management of the State of Israel.

An early promulgation from 1948 conveys some of the 'flavor' of this body of laws. It stipulates that the minister of agriculture may declare all lands that have remained uncultivated for one year "virgin lands," and distribute them to others—provided, of course, that the recipients are Jewish.

What wasn't mentioned in the text of that early law was what made it so devastating for Palestinians. In those days many, if not most, Arab villages were subject to the Israeli military government. In order to cultivate their lands, the Arab peasants required permission, which was very frequently denied. After a year of such Israeli-ordered idleness the minister of agriculture came and took the land!

Land Theft, Urban-Style

Since the conversation with my friend, and having had Jaffa, in particular, brought so vividly to my attention, I learned about a still-unfolding situation involving the eviction of 35 Arab families from their Jaffa neighborhood. You will not read about it in The New York Times, but approximately 250 people residing in Jaffa's Karem-al-Dalak neighborhood were suddenly and without any warning served with eviction notices by the Tel-Aviv/Jaffa municipality.

These families—including working people who pay taxes—were told to vacate their homes within 60 days. There was no mention of alternative housing, although these residents have protected-rights status. That status was guaranteed to them by the municipality in the 1950s when it first shifted them to their current location from a strip they originally inhabited near the beach.

Legally, this protected status means that the municipality cannot evict them without providing a satisfactory alternative. Moreover, the reason given for the eviction was for the purpose of building roads! (In Israel, the building of roads, ostensibly for general, common use, enables municipal and other governmental authorities to confiscate any lands they want. By "coincidence," these lands almost always are owned by Arabs.)

The truth of the matter was revealed through a bit of investigation in the municipality's planning department, by journalists from Israel's alternative Challenge magazine. That truth was quite different from the "official" purpose given in the eviction notices: a private developer was planning to construct a luxury-apartment complex in this, the very heart of Jaffa, and these Arab families were in the way!

A residents' committee has been formed to undertake resistance actions, to negotiate with the municipality and the developers, and to organize collective refusal of financial compensation. Committee members hope to marshall the support of their representatives in the municipal council, even though these very representatives had not warned the targeted community of the projected development.

Under the horribly restrictive housing circumstances for Arab families in Israel, there are no alternatives for those about to be dispossessed. There is just no spare housing stock available to Arab inhabitants. Under Israeli apartheid laws, they cannot rent apartments in buildings belonging to Jews or in buildings located in Jewish residential quarters. Even if that housing was originally built as "public," Arabs are excluded.

Where the 35 families would go is not a theoretical question.

All of Jaffa's population of approximately 20,000 are, in fact, in jeopardy. Already families are doubling and tripling up. In the event, with development plans in the making to transform Jaffa into the "pearl of the Mediterranean," Arabs are not to be seen or heard in the exclusive and exclusively Jewish luxury habitation. So it will not be long before all the Arabs of Jaffa will face eviction unless the inhabitants of Karem-al-Dalak succeed in their struggle, and set an example to be followed by others.

(Footnote: in a July 23 telephone conversation I learned from the editor of Challenge that the next target for "clearing" of its Arab inhabitants is the AJAMI Quarter, Jaffa's shoreline on the Mediterranean, the most prime neighborhood of all! There developers are proposing to build 6,000 super-luxury apartments, for the richest of the rich.)

Demolition of Homes

The setting for this story of evictions and threatened evictions of Arab families is, of course, within the confines of Israel itself. The Arabs concerned are Israeli citizens. Where the treatment of Arabs goes absolutely haywire, totally beyond all limits of human behavior, and expropriation of land is pursued by means foul and fouler, is in the occupied territories.

Ever since the Palestinian intifada began, demolition of homes and the partial boarding-up of homes was a favorite method of Israeli authorities for punishing the families of Palestinian men who acted violently against the Israeli occupation.

But in 1996 the circumstances, rationale and pace have changed. In that year alone, 140 Palestinian houses were demolished. In the first three months of 1997 56 houses were destroyed, and the rationale was no longer "punishment" for "terrorism" by a family member, but that the houses had been built without the necessary permits (which, of course, have been virtuallly unobtainable for Palestinians for many years).

In June and July of this year 860 houses were marked for demolition—all in Area "C" of the West Bank, and all near Jewish settlements and the bypass roads that connect them. At this writing, planned house demolitions for 1997 in East Jerusalem are still to be announced. My most recent information brings threatened demolitions very close to 1,000.

Some of these houses are mere shells and uninhabited, erected, it seems, as a way for Palestinians to establish their own "facts on the ground."

Unfortunately, caught in the midst of this tug are families who do live in their homes but in fear of facing a pile of rubble and the elements. Threatened demolitions are thus part of an all-encompassing psychological warfare visited on the Palestinian people.

Surely the most affected are the thousands of children who already have witnessed, or will, the destruction of their one haven of comfort and security. Such suffering, imprinted in childhood, cannot lead to anything even resembling tolerance. "An eye for an eye" is not a Jewish monopoly!

Playing With Maps

In anticipation of the so-called "final status negotiations" the various interested constituencies—both in Israel and among the Palestinians—are vying for their respective versions to be "laid on the table." No one should miss the fundamental change wrought by the Oslo "process."

Israel created a paradigm of indirect control in the West Bank and Gaza that preserved for itself all the advantages of sovereignty—as in Israel proper—without the disadvantages of maintaining a costly and sometimes dangerous military occupation. The Jewish settlements remain. Military, economic and demographic dominance is intact. And so is the complete Israeli control over all natural resources, water in particular.

But the Palestinian Authority becomes responsible in the newly "liberated" areas for rooting out any threat from within these areas to the security of Jewish settlements and to Israel itself.

A picture of the "advantages" of this post-Oslo situation is presented by Danny Rubinstein, in an article entitled "Continued Control by Other Means" in the June 30 issue of the Hebrew daily Ha'aretz. He emphasized that after three years of Palestinian Authority rule, "it is abundantly clear to the Palestinian population that the range of means of oppression available to the Israelis have not diminished after the 're-deployment' from Gaza and West Bank towns."

Whatever the emerging "map," a pall of profound sadness lingers especially over the transformation of Jerusalem across these 49 years. To comprehend the full impact of the change, I urge readers who cannot see the monstrous physical reality of it at first hand to order Ibrahim Matar's 20-page booklet, The Transformation of Jerusalem, 1948 & 1997, from the Palestinian General Delegation to the United Kingdom, 5 Galena Road, Hammersmith, London W6 OLT, England. It is unbearable to read.

In pondering it all, I wonder when the disgrace of Jewish silence will be fully exposed; and whether leaders of the Palestinian Authority will continue to lend themselves to Binyamin Netanyahu's efforts to turn them from liberators into oppressors of their own people.