Ajami, ethnic cleansing one step further, unless the high court stops it

Last Wednesday judge Zafet of the Tel Aviv district court heard the case of 28 Jaffa residents (honesty demands to say that i'm one of them) against the Israel Land Administration and the Be'emuna company who won the tender for a piece of land right in the middle of Ajami. Originally Palestinian owned, declared "absentee property" and finally "publicly owned" and sold by the Israel Land Administration by tender to the highest bidder, the Be'emuna company. Until here everything has the appearance of "stinking but kosher" according to Israeli law. We were represented by lawyers Gil Gan Mor and Dan Yakir of the Israel Association for Civil Rights.

Until a few years ago, our market took place on the plot. The market was closed by the municipality for no reason (or so it appeared at the time) and no other plot was offered for the purpose of creating a new market, leaving us, the Jaffa population as well as many people from Bat Yam and Tel Aviv, as well as small farmers from the central area of the country, without a cheap  fresh food market, a true necessity in an impoverished area such as Jaffa. 

Yet the Be'emuna company is NOT just another building company out to make a good profit. They marketed the flats planned on to be constructed by them on the Ajami plot, to the members of one very specific group only: Zionist religious Jews. They put it bluntly on their website, but just to make sure, we also called them, interested in buying a cheap flat on their plot. Not very surprisingly, we were refused. Private companies can sell to whom they like, but NOT when the land was previously publicly owned, as in this case and according to the "Ka'aden" high court ruling.

The company's efforts are part of a well orchestrated and funded, much larger effort to expel the Palestinian population from the shared Palestinian and Jewish towns and cities in Israel. It appears that after the disengagement from Gaza some of the settlers and their colonially minded friends decided settling in the West Bank was no longer an ideological necessity for them. Instead they decided to address Israel's mixed cities with their racist ideology. The process is under its way in Accre, Lod, Ramle, Haifa, Nazareth Elite as well as in Jaffa. And there is nothing friendly or innocent about it.

We are talking about a concentrated effort to "replace" the original Palestinian residents with Jewish ones; Not to live together and share our cultures but to expel the Palestinians from their homes and "Judaize" the area.

During the previous sessions the judge had made remarks which led us to conclude that he is not as impartial as he should be. Therefore we asked him to dismiss himself, which he refused.

The verdict was sent to us yesterday afternoon: not surprisingly the judge decided in favor of the colonialist project.

We will have to appeal our case to the Supreme Court.

Black forces in a not so orange orange grove

When demolished, a home makes an awful sound. Yesterday it went on for hours, the slow demolition process of the second floor of the Dake home. Large yellow machines slowly crunched away at the building. Huge blocks of falling concrete demolishing the garden in the same go.
The people watching on helplessly. Their possessions, clothes, furniture, kids' schoolbooks etc. out in the dust.

Two years ago some 100 people barricaded themselves on the roof of the Dake home in Jaffa's Dake orange grove and prevented its demolition. Yesterday the Dake family were less, much less lucky, when Ron Huldai's municipality goons demolished their home under the "protection" of hundreds of blimp led ninja-style clad special forces policemen.

In the early hours masked policemen entered the Dake home and arrested the men of the family and told the family's women to start packing. Literally hundreds of policemen, special forces and border police blocked off all roads to the Dake grove and the close surroundings.

Whole streets were closed to the public, even to those living there and wishing to go back home. The operations were led from a special command tent where police men kept track of the ground forces by means of a camera studded blimp high up in the air.

To understand the true impact of the demolition of the Dake house is is important to back in history.

The Dake family were the proud owners of a huge orange grove prior to 1948, the Naqbe, just south of Jaffa. 

In the grove were the large family home, storage facilities, guard houses, a pump house etc.

After 1948 the family stayed on. They lived in the grove and over time, as the family expanded, more houses were added. 

The municipality did not bother to make a zoning plan for the grove, although it is on municipal territory. As a result, it is impossible to receive a building permit for anything, not even for repairing your house: as there are no zoning plan definitions for the area, there is no buroicratic procedure possible for getting a building permit.

Yet the Dakes, who own the land, needed homes, so they constructed those without a permit.

The municipality never provided any services in the grove, there are no roads, no waste disposal, no kinder garden (by now there are a few hundred people, including many children, living in the grove). The sewage system is horrid and floods every now and then and until a few years ago every winter the grove was flooded. Only after a young child drowned inside his home, the municipality did something about the flood drains.

The lack of a zoning plan has been going on for some 60 years now. The Dakes cannot build anything on their land and live in poverty. When they try to build the municipality arrives and destroys. The houses  are rebuilt, making use of cheap materials or recycling some of the rubble in the construction of the new house, as all know it is only a matter of time until the next demolition.

After the municipality took out a demolition order on the flat he built for his son, Moussa Dake decided to fight back. He lost in the Tel Aviv peace court, but won an incredible victory in the regional court, where the judge criticised the municipality for 60 years of planning neglect. The Dakes felt victorious and the verdict was f major importance as it had implications for many other areas in the country as well.

But the municipality appealed to the high court of justice and won. The verdict in this case was formalistic and did not even try to deal with the serious criticism and legal concerns of the regional court's verdict.

The Dakes appealed once more, but the municipality decided not to wait for the court's decision and yesterday, in spite of the request to wait until the verdict, the goons went about their ugly business.

Moussa had become a symbol and the legal fight he put up was being followed by many involved in planning and housing rights.

  

Another Jaffa family out in the streets

When R. and her 5 children came home this afternoon, they found all their furniture out in the street, much of it severely damaged and broken. The doorlock had been changed.
The house owner, well known and very wealthy Jaffa property tycoon Walid Aboulafia (of bakery fame), had abused R's absence from the hovel she had been renting from him for some three years, to evict her, illegally, without a court order.
R. asked the police to come, but the sinlge police man did not help her. "There was nothing he could", do he said. R. was under so much pressure by then, that she forgot to take his details.
In fact, it is Mr. Walid Aboulafia who broke the law by evicting her illegally, without a court order.

The flat R. rented was a 2 1/2 room affair in Jaffa's Al Ajami neighborhood. Damp, it's walls blackened by fungi. In the winter the rain entered through the cracked walls. The kitchen sink was not connected to the sewage, so R. used a bucket instead.
For over a year she and her kids had their daily shower at R's mother's tiny house, as the shower in R.'s house didn't function and the owner, rich Walid Aboulafia, refused to repair it.

R. who paid a very high rent relative to the ugly state of the house she lived in, stopped paying the rent. The owner cut off her water and electricity supply. It was easy for him to do so, because in the past, the flat had been larger and he subdevided it, one assumes without a permit. As a result R. shared the electricity and water bill with her neighbors, so it was very easy to punish her.

R. started looking for a new place, but the rents in Jaffa have gone up and all she has is her social security payments. Also many houseowners want all kinds of guarantees, which when you live on social security, you cannot easily get.

The beds were literally broken, as if they had been thrown from the second floor where she lived. Maybe they were.

Due to the Ramadan, Jaffa's streets are very quiet, so we have no witnesses to the method of furniture removal. The broken aquarium says it all, i will not ask questions about the fish. Volunteers from the Islamic movement helped R. to move her stuff (or rather that part worth salvaging) to Esther's house. Esther who's always there to help each and everyone. But the damage has been done. Five children out in the streets. Next week the schoolyear starts. I wonder how R.'s children will cope. We could not find their new schoolbooks in the mess.

Ramadan, Jaffa 2009

Mum & three kids became homeless today

Manal Haj is a single mother of three school age children. They are all out on the street , homeless.

Three days before the onset of the Ramdan and two weeks before the beginning of the school year, Manal and her children have nowhere to go after Halamish, the public housing company evicted them from their home today.

The story is one of those burocratic flipflops, as Manal has been eligible for public housing for over 13 years, but due to change in the type of social security she receives, the payments were stopped for some three months, after which she started receiving a different category of social security.

In order to be elegible for public housing, you need to be dependent for at least two years on social security. Manal receibed social security for 13 years, but during 3 months last year she didn't receive a thing and as a result lost her housing rights.

A New Home for the Marzouk Family

The Marzouk family from Jaffa were living in a dangerous building, that was about to fall down.
The public housing company, Halamish, offered them another home, but due to burocracy and municipal stupidity, the family were stuck in the old home.
I wrote about the family's ordeal a few weeks ago, after one of the children was almost killed by a huge piece of concrete that fell from the ceiling.
The story was picked up by Yediot Ahronot, Israel's favorite daily and this week the family finally moved into their new home.

The Etrog market, a temporary victory

The Israel Land Administration has been legally ordered to not hand over the 20 appartment plot on Mendes France street to "beemuna", the contracter who wants to sell only to nationalist religious buyers.

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel appealed the sale of public land to the ultra right wing group on behalf of the Jaffa Coalition of Organizations protecting the land and housing rights of the Palestinian community.

As a result the sale has been -temporarily- frozen. A small victory in the fight against gentrification and land theft!

About to be thrown out on the streets: mum & 5 young kids

I recall watching a TV program based on a story by Dickens when i was a child. Some years ago i read a book "Angela's Ashes". In both cases i recall having a sort of feeling of appreciation, that at least "these things no longer happen that way today". Ahem, well, they actually do happen today.

R. is a divorced mother of 5 young children, living in Jaffa. Her husband married twice since leaving her and left both other women with children as well. He refuses to pay alimony and R and her kids are dependent on social security payments, which add up to about 2.700 NIS a month. (about 600$ for her and her 5 kids)
Her rent is 2.300 NIS. This is the monthly rent for a tiny living room and 1 bedroom, both heavily stained by fungi growing on the wall and ceilings due to humidity problems. The roof and walls leak badly when it rains. R. has NO shower (it is blocked up so badly that it cannot be used, the owner refuses to carry out the necessary repairs) and the kitchen has no drain. So buckets are used for that purpose. Showers are taken daily at friends' and neighbors' place.
The house owner belongs to a very wealthy family who own many flats in Jaffa. They love money. For them every hovel is "an investment". For their renters it's "home". But a home that doesn't look like nor feel like a real home.

R. receives rental aid of about 600 NIS monthly. Which leaves her unable to provide for her and her kids. She is behind with the rent and the house-owner has informed her he will evict her this week, as he wants his money.
Riki is desperate to find a flat, but there is nothing she can actually afford. Her kids go to a nearby school, so the area (Ajami) is of some importance.
If any of you know about something available, please let me know.

But R. is just one case.
There are many like her. There is a big request for small rental flats, as many families cannot afford to buy. This has left the flat owners with the option to make money. And they do. Disgusting hovels that do not earn the name "flat", go for amazing rental prizes. Some people have gone to live back home with their parents, but for many one parent families dependent on welfare (and not only for them, also many families living on a minimum wage cannot afford the rent) this option does not exist.
The right to a roof above ones head is a basic human right and Israel has signed different international agreements concerning this right, yet that is as far as it goes.
We are quickly heading towards a housing disaster and no one seems to be caring a great deal.

The Tel Aviv municipality committee on affordable housing caters to the 7nth percentile, couples who earn some 11.0000 NIS monthly. For them the municipality wants to build rental housing in which they can live for 5 years, for a monthly rent of 2.800 NIS.
Weird, as after all these families can afford to rent good flats on the private market with their income. Also they can get a mortgage to buy. Whereas lower income families (and that includes employed many poor whose salaries are simply too low) find themselves living in substandard conditions (i personally know a family with 8 kids to live in 1 room) , unsafe housing for which they pay very high rents.
They same municipal committee for affordable housing assumes the ministry of housing provides adequate solutions for people making less by subsidizing rent and providing public housing to the very poor. Do these guys live on the moon?
Or is it official policy: providing incentives for the well to do to live in Tel Aviv and actively kicking out the less well to do and poor?

Tell R. about their ideas. And perhaps tell her also where these presumes solutions are. After all the waiting list for Halamish public housing is 12 years....

R. will be out on the streets any day now. Her houseowner cannot but be defined as just another leach. We tried to talk to him, but all he is interested in, is money. He claims he can get $ 1000 monthly for his disgusting hovel. And he is probably right, as people are desperate.

Alert for miriam's home - barricading NOW

Hi,

All of those in Jaffa, please go to Miriam's home at the corner of Jerusalem Boulevard 37, NOW
She has not been able to find a flat and they will evict her and her 6 children out into the streets TODAY.
We can and must prevent it.
We need you all over there