Inter Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues - Day four - May 5, 2010

Jaffa, Israel is part of the Tel Aviv city area. Just south of Tel Aviv along the beautiful sandy beached coastline, Jaffa hooks a bit into the sea such that from its beaches, you can get a perfect line of sight view of the Tel Aviv city view and north. The beach is beautiful, and the ancient port of Jaffa, with its fortress, battlements, and old city walls extending along the edge of the city. The old buildings are quite picturesque, well, most of it is, at least the part you are allowed to see.

You see, the rest of the ancient walls of the fort and seaport buildings, dating back to biblical times, have been sold to developers and have been roped off to tourists.

So has about 30% of the rest of the city's old buildings.

Jaffa has about 55,000 residents and about 20,000 of them are Arab. Jaffa is one of Israel's identified 'mixed cities' - Haifa is another one up north; a mixed city is one that has a certain percentage - I guess it's somewhere over 25% - of Arab residents.

Jaffa is slowly being sold off to developers who are renovating houses, buildings, apartments, and evidently, the entire ancient seaport, to 'gentrify' the city.

Landlords are raising rents as the demand for housing along the coast increases, and many of the current residents, primarily Arabs (although Jews have been caught in this as well), can no longer afford the rent.

Okay, okay, you say, that's the market economy. Supply and demand. Yeah, yeah.

But after what I've been exposed to the last few days, and hearing from not so crazy people about some pretty uncomfortable discriminatory practices against Israel's minority populations, I'm not so sure that this is simply a free market enterprise in housing.

Jaffa is a very poor city. My good friend Mitch Chupak works for the Jaffa Institute, and part of his work is supplying food to hundreds (if not more) of Jaffa's residents. In 2007, I and my family went delivering some of their food packages to some residents. Their conditions were not very good to say the least.

Today we went to a really nice Arab-Jewish Community Center and met with the Director. the funding for this community center was granted through US dollars and the Tel Aviv Foundation. In other words, government money did not buy this center. He keeps it going on donations primarily. Nice fellow, very committed. Ibrahim Abu-Shindi works with the Arab and the Jewish communities to keep the center viable and productive in the lives of all Jaffa's residents. It certainly seems to be while we were there.

He took us on a short walk around Jaffa; showing us an old demolished inner city market that has just been bought by Jewish settlers from Gaza (?), very religious folk moving into a neighborhood that is about 90% Arab and very poor. You gotta wonder what the motivation might be for such a move; well, after seeing the place, and listening to folks talk, I certainly do.

We were about 20 people standing along the street with Mr. Abu-Shindi by this once thriving city market. A truck drove by and slowed. The driver called out to Mr. Abu-Shindi and asked him (it was translated for us by one of our hosts) if we were there to buy more of the land of the old market. The old driver looked suspiciously at us all. No, no, he said, they are here to learn about Jaffa's troubles. Well, that ended well, the old driver waved and drove slowly away. I'm sure he was still unsure and I'll bet he paid a call on Mr. Abu-Shindi later to verify that he wasn't be forced to lie to him.

But, there is also good news. We heard later in the day that Israel has allocated about 800 shekels toward a modest project improving several areas in the Arab sector; primarily, housing, economic development, transportation and security.

Something I learned today; there is no public transportation in Arab cities. The funding is targeting 13 (I think) Arab cities with elected officials (some have appointed leaders, those cities and villages are not on the initial list). Many of these cities/villages have smaller villages next door and the expectation is that any changes will include those outlying areas.

Poverty - Arabs make up 20% of the Israeli population, yet account for 44% of the poor in Israel.

More to come, my friends. I'm tired.

Neal Elyakin, Israel

May 5, 2010