Cruelty Alley

The little girls are already forgetting today's drama, replaying it with twists and turns, and turning it into a fairy tale with a happy ending.
Yet the other "little girl" L. is still severely traumatised and crying non stop, tears streaming from her cataract covered eyes.

Some 15 years ago the place was a successful fish restaurant, before all the other places along Kedem Street (street nr. 60 or Ajami Street prior to 1948) were opened. The clients preferred the newer and fancier places, business went down and the restaurant closed. It stood empty for years.
Its very wealthy owner owns another very successful restaurant in the north and didn't care too much about the Jaffa place, that had stood neglected for many years. Having grown old and perhaps somewhat tired, he let his younger brother take care of business.

The younger brother, well aware of the severe housing shortage in Jaffa, divided the place into 5 small crummy flats and started to rent them out for some 500-600 $ a month. No contract.
You pay a few months ahead and receive a key, you miss a payment and you are out.
Of course the restaurant owner's brother did not bother to get a permit (to turn the property into housing units) from the municipality, nor did he bother to pay the very old and by now huge debts to that same municipality and the electricity company, so water and electricity supply "are somewhat problematic". The tenants, not having contracts, cannot register the municipal and electricity bills in their own names.
Only very poor people, having no other choice, are willing to take the risk to live in such a place. My friend A, divorced mum of two little girls, and barely surviving on her cleaner's salary, is one of them. Her neighbour H, with his young daughter and elderly, retarded, half blind sister live there as well. Some two years ago, their key money flat's ceiling caved in and they have been living in "the restaurant" ever since, while the legal procedures on the other house continue, slowly as these things go.
Their financial situation is very bad and they missed last months rent payment. So today the owner sent in the goons. L. the elderly sister, a sweet women known all over the area, likes to play with dolls together with the little girls that live in the alley. Although half blind and elderly, she really is "their age" and the little girls accept her, as she is sweet and innocent. L. was home alone when the goons arrived.
She was scared so she didn't open the door as she has been instructed no to when alone at home and strangers knock on the door.
The goons broke the door and started yelling at her that she should pack her things because she owes rent. They then started to throw the family's belongings out on the street.
L's screams brought out the all the other tenants who intervened on her behalf, pointing out that L is retarded and that the goons should talk to her brother. They formed a fierce defence around L and called the police. At that point, the goons took off (although the police never arrived and told L.'s brother H. should come in and file a complaint before).

Fighting for Jaffa, together

The settlers who wish to turn Jaffa into a Jewish only city, have in essence caused a complete coalition of many Jaffa organizations who prior to this threat never cooperated.
The call was for a joint struggle of Palestinians and Jews against the settlers, who actively threaten the good relationship in the neighbourhood. And to do so by peaceful and democratic means.
At 17.00 all met close to the area where the yeshiva guys bought a plot of land, where there used to be a market serving all of Jaffa's population.
Among the speakers were Omar Siksek, member of the municipal council, Sheikh Anwar Dake of the southern section of the Islamic movement, lawyer Haled of the Muslim Council, SheIkh Abu Ajwe of the northern section of the Islamic movement, Gabi of the Christian club, Knesset member Dov Khenin, Hana Amoury of the popular committee, municipal council member Ahmad Mashrawi, Ilan and Noga of Ofek Hadash, who carried out a research on the ways of functioning of so called "Garinim Toraniim" and several other settler organizations.
The Israel Land Administration is a public body, managing land owned by the public. When they sell lands, they cannot do so to an exclusive group, as per high court decision (Bagatz Ka'aden).
In Jaffa, the sale of public land is sensitive, for two main reasons:
Originally this land belonged to Palestinians. In 1948-1949 it was declared "absentee" property and handed over to the state.
Some 13 years ago a contract was made (and authorized in the Tel Aviv district court) between the housing ministry and Jaffa's Palestinian community according to which the housing ministry undertook it to create 400 housing units for the community, which suffers from a severe housing crisis.
So far 27 flats have been constructed out of 400.....
The "Etrog" plot is one of the last large publicly owned plots on which a large number of flats can be constructed. Most other pubic plots are smaller which makes it less easy for public housing or affordable housing for the poor Palestinian community.
The Israel Land Administration sold the Etrog Plot to a Bemuna, a company owned by a Hebron settle , who explicitly state "they will sell flats only to religious nationalist Jews".
Were-checked this by registering and calling, interesting in buying a housing unit in the new project. "We" being 2 activists, a muslim social worker and a secular Jewish researcher. They met with blunt refusal. In other cou ntries this would be called blunt racism.

The Settlers have arrived – the struggle is just beginning

What?

Protest tent against the new housing project for the national-religious public in the heart of Ajami neighborhood in Jaffa.

When?05/06/09, at 17:00,

Where?

At the site of the Jabaliye Market, HaEtrog st. corner of Mendes France st.

Why?

On May 7th 2009, the Bemuna Company won the bid to purchase land for the building of 20 housing units dedicated to the Jewish national-religious public in Ajami neighborhood – the heart of Arab Jaffa.
Bemuna also declared that “this was only the beginning” and that its efforts for the Judaization of Jaffa would include the further construction of 200 housing units. This project can be added to the already active ‘garin torani’ and ‘yeshivat hesder’ which, under the banner of ‘strengthening’ the Jewish communities in mixed cities and retaining the city’s Jewish sanctity, have already begun to envelop its streets.
Research gathered displays a worrying number of people fresh from the settlement and Greater Israel movements, who are active in a scheme aimed at ‘Judaizing the mixed cities of Israel’ with the simultaneous displacement of Arab residents – a project which has already had some ‘success’ in Acca, Lud and Ramle. These groups are funded by external financiers but are also supported by the state of Israel itself and by the municipality of Tel Aviv. They have adopted the same ‘setting facts on the ground’ approach used so extensively by the settler movement based in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
In light of this danger, and under the slogan “Jaffa is in Danger! Our strength is our Unity”, all the groups and committees active in Jaffa have come together in order to build a common strategy to fight this phenomenon. This coalition will be active on the community, the public and the media in order to recruit supporters, both from within Jaffa and outside, in the struggle to prevent the ‘expansion of the settlement’ in our city.
We will not be silent! We will not accept the Judaization of Jaffa!
Partners in the coalition:
The Popular Committee for Land and Housing Rights in Jaffa, the Rabita, the Jaffa List, the Southern and Northern Islamic Movements, the Islamic Council, the Orthodox Society, the Ajami Neighborhood Committee, the Jaffa municipal council members and other public figures.
For further details: Hana - 054-4486667

shelter? what shelter?

The IDF home front command is involved in a massive civil defence exercise , in the course of which all citizens were supposed to run for shelter,yesterday at 11.00 when the sirens started blaring.
In Jaffa all went on as usual, nobody, except perhaps kids in the schools, ran anywhere, as there is no where to run to in the large majority of the neighbourhoods. None of the old houses have shelters and public shelters are, few, far away and locked.

In the staircase of me house, suposedle a "safer spot" if there is no better alternative (there isn't, not a room that has no windows, toand the roof is all certified carcinogenic asbestos) but that's where the gaz contained, 2 on each of the three floors. The continuous faint gaz smell suggests there is a tiny leak somewhere, but no technician has been able to deal with it. The staircase is open to the air, so i'm not too worried about explosions in regular days.

But that's the place where i live.
The old houses in Jaffa have no shelters. There is no where to go in case of a real event.

The main thing being ofcourse, that the home command can put a big V on "exercise well carried out" as if preparing for the next investigative committee which will surely follow the coming war because of the civillian catastrophe. Everything is about PR in this country. And very litte about true problem solving.

Mourning

Dressed in black, but for soft crying, now and then, all is quiet in the women's mourning tent.
The imam' s voice can be heard from the men's tent, just a few meters away.
Dry figs and endless small cups of bitter coffee are handed out.
The mother clutches her dead son's picture to her chest.

Why?

Another murder on Yefet Street

Saturday evening, 21.00, enjoying a mellow evening with my friends and their kids, while trying to do some work on an article, gotta deadline coming up.

A few hundred meters from where we sit, shots on Yefet Street, 2 young men are hit, one of them dies a little later in the hospital. The other, lucky, one was wounded.

It has become so common, most newspapers do not even mention it. Another murder, another young life finished, Jaffa, who cares?
Well, we do care. The murder victim belongs to one of the prominent families, but that didn't help him very much. I know this family, my heart goes out to them.

As usual there's a lot of border police around on Jaffa's streets today.

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.

How stupid can the thought police get?

The short answer? Very, very, very stupid.
And dangerous.

I'm relating of course to the "Naqbe" law, which, if passed, will forbid Israeli citizens to undertake public activities in commemoration of the Palestinian catastrophe, the Naqbe.

Democracy includes the freedom of expression and freedom of the press. According to the proposed law, indicating "Naqbe Day" will be a criminal offence. Israel has never really been a true democracy according to accepted international standards, but the current government are showing their true and very ugly face.

The law proposal is supported by the minister of justice, Yacov Ne'eman as well as by the minister of education, Gideon Sa'ar. When similar racist law proposals were suggested a few years ago, they would be judged as racist and non-democratic by the knesset's legal councellor and find their way to their proper place, the nearest garbage can.

I don't think we can ever create a true peace with the Palestinians, if we do not recognize their catastrophe, when the majority of them became refugees and lost almost all they had. By making the very mentioning of the Naqbe an offence, we are creating yet more distance from a true peace agreement. And it is not the politicians who will be paying the price.
All of us will do so. Everybody's blood is red.

Bribing your way around Jaffa

The story is out on the streets and it is bad as in VERY BAD.
The great Mahmoudiah Mosque is a Jaffa landmark. Constructed in the late 18th and early 19th century on the site of a much older mosque by "Abou ElNabout" the lovely 2-domed high minaretted building is part of the Jaffa skyline when coming from the north. It also serves as Jaffa's central mosque for Friday prayers.
Next to it is the "Kishle", the old Turkish jail and police station, to be turned into a hotel. The hotel managers or owners want to add several floors (which will throw a heavy shadow on the mosque's court yard and change the Jaffa skyline for ever, as well as create a completely different atmosphere in this very lovely area) and it appears the owners may have tried to bribe someone in the Jaffa Muslim Council so the mosque will take back their opposition to the hotel owners' plans.
Bribing with major, big money.
The relations in the Muslim community aren't the best, and this may well make things worse.
In a time the Jaffa community needs to be unified against the settlers and gentrifiers, the bribe story (if it is true) couldn't come at a worse moment.

Roots and Uprooting - the Case of Abou Seif

For three days the police have been uprooting trees in the Abu Seif orange grove in Jaffa. Supposedly in order to search for drugs. None have been found so far, but many trees have been uprooted in the process.
I find it rather hard to imagine how one can hide anything underneath a fully grown tree, unless it was done, when that tree was planted some 20 or more years ago. Which, in the case of hiding drugs, wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.
A whole lot of sense is not what characterizes the Jaffa police in particular, but even they.... So there must be another reason behind this blatant destruction of private property of the Abou
Seif clan in Jaffa and the search for drugs (none have been found after three days of destruction) is a mere pretext for something else.
Harassment as part of the show of "i am stronger"?
Or perhaps the trees bother the police from observing what's going on the inside the Abou Seif grove?

Olive tree uprooting tactiques from the occupied territories have been imported into Jaffa.

What about, perhaps, Emile Habibi Square?

Today the municipality is going to name the main entrance square to Jaffa in the name of one Joseph Carmel, a property tycoon who reportedly donated some money to the Tel Aviv municipality.

Yet again the municipality makes an effort to wipe out Jaffa's Palestinian character. Why not name the square for.... Emile Habibi, author, thinker, and politician as well as Israel Prize recipient for literature?
Or perhaps, simply, Seraya square, in commemoration of the Seraya (the Otttoman municipality building) or Farid El Atrash Square (in name of the great singer and oud player beloved by both Palestinians and many Jews) or.... there are so many options.
Or "Mahmoudiyeh Square" in honour of the great Mahmoudiyeh Mosque located just off the square?

The round about square is located on the historical entrance (or exit: it was from here all taxis left for Beirut, Damascus etc. prior to 1948) of Jaffa, at the northern end of the clock tower square.
Ron Huldai, the mayor, spoke about correcting historical errors.
He continues making them.

Extremist settlers in Ajami, will they ever stop?

Not too long ago a "hesder" yeshiva was opened in Ajami, in an old synagogue that had been standing neglected for some 40 years. Neglected, because the Jewish community of Ajami had left to better neighbourhoods (better at the time they left, when Ajami was one of the worst slums) and there simply was no need for a synagogue. The Jews (some 20%) still living in Ajami are predominantly secular.

Palestinians and Jews in Ajami live together, quite peacefully enjoying a relation of good neighbours. My very devout Muslim neighbours have the key to my flat, in case they need to get on the roof (which can only be reached through my home) or, more often, in case i loose my keys or forgot to water the plants on a very very hot khamsin day. We often meet for a coffee to exchange the latest gossip or a good cake recipe (usually followed by and exchange of the sweet results).
We dance at marriage parties and weep at burials, rejoice in the birth of yet another daughter or son. We each have our sources of good olive oil, za'atar and the best coffee and share those, while bragging ours is just that little bit better. Neighbours.
Enter the yeshiva. Let it be said, i have nothing against religion. However, i do have a problem with religio and its institutions being abused as tools for justifying violent acts and racism.

After the disengagement from the Gaza strip, many of its expelled settlers started to see the mixed (Arab Jewish) cities (most of Israel is very segregated) as the "next front" for nationalist activity. They do not hide their ideology. Just go to their websites.
They are also supported by Lieberman's fascist ideology and extremist right-wing Jews from the US and elsewhere.
They claim they want to "strengthen the weak and threatened Jewish communities". If so, why didn't they select Yafo Gimmel, which indeed is a weakened, predominantly Jewish neighbourhood.
In Yafo gimmel, there are many ppor Jews, recent and not so recent migrants from the ex soviet union territories and Ethiopia).
Instead they selected Ajami, where there is no Jewish community to speak of and the few Jews living there tend to be well educated and economically strong and yes, also secular (some having a strong cultural and or ethnic Jewish identity) and having little interest in this particular yeshiva's brand of fundamentalism.
The very well-funded yeshiva is buying up property wholesale, in expensive Ajami, for its community, intending to turn Ajami into a religious Jewish community. Disregarding ofcourse that its Palestinian residents have no reason to close their shops and restaurant businesses on shabat, their best business day and the Jewish holidays.
The settlers like to walk around in groups, carrying flags and making a nationalist show of themselves, in absolute disrespect of the feelings of their neighbours. Part of their behaviour appears to be aimed at provoking violence, perhaps to convince more peope like themselves to come and "save" Jaffa.
Save from what? It exsists only in their imagination and ideology. We have no need of "being saved".

Last week they won a tender for a piece of public land very close to my home. Publicly owned land, which should have gone to the Palestinian community, from whom it was stolen in 1948, (and once more some 4 years ago, when the municipality closed the market which functioned on that particular piece of land) and with whom there is a legally binding agreement to construct 400 public housing units to solve the very bad Palestinian housing situation.
Yet the land went to an ultra religious building society who sell land only to religious Jewish families. Imagine a group of ultra nationalist whites in the US buying up publicly owned land in the middle of a poor black community and then selling the land only to selected similarly minded whites who publicly proclaim they want to turn the community into a whites only area.
Non-religious Jewish friends of mine contacted the company and asked if they could buy a flat. in the project. They were refused as flats are only sold to "our people".

Well, that's what is happening in Jaffa, in Ajami.
And it is happening in all the mixed cities: in Ramle, in Lod, in Acco and in Haifa.

We have seen the horrid results of this type of activities in Acco, when the homes and cars of several Palestinian families were torched by Jewish extremists.
In Acco, as a result of these actions, most Arab families left their nice homes in the middle class "Mizrach" neighborhood, scared for their lives after the days long progrom carried out against them by a mob of some thousand crazed "religious" nationalists encircling their homes for hours, until the police and the ambulances were able to save them.
It happened last year.

The Jaffa yeshiva receives support from the municipality and other offical state institutions. We are not talking about a small bunch of crazed idealists but about a very well-organized ,coordinated and well funded country-wide effort (with international financial support), aimed at creating a separate society. In other parts of the world they would call it "apartheid".

Are we next?

The murderer from Bi'lin

The people from Bil'in have been struggling against the wall for a long period of time now. Although the Israeli high court of justice judged in their favour, the construction continues.

The people from Bil'in in cooperation with the internationals and Israeli human rights activists hold weekly peaceful demonstrations to protest the construction opf the wall which is cutting off the vilage from its agricultural lands.
The IDF has shot at the (peaceful) protesters again and again and again, usually using so-called "non lethal" weapons such as rubber bullets (metal balls covered with a thin layer of rubber) and extreme distance gaz cannisters.
The only problem: when you shoot these from a short distance at someone's torso (as is the habit of the "most moral army" in the world, the IDF) they become very very lethal.
Several people have been very badly wounded and some have been killed, Bassam among them.

If you recognise the guy in the image, please send the info to palcrimes (at) yahoo.com so he can be prosecuted for murder.

Imagine

A truly furious hot sand-particle carrying wind is blowing in from all directions. I live between the sea and a high-rise building, the latter one causing this very strange turbulence.
By now, inside my house, now much is covered by a thin layer of Sahara or Saudi desert dust. No use dusting until the storm is over. The weather forecast talkes about the khamsin cooling off in the late afternoon.
I suddenly have this image, like the pyramids before their excavation, all of Tel Aviv Jaffa covered by sand dunes, the dessicated Azrieli tower remains barely sticking out, the only remains of a failed & wartorn civilization long gone.
Archeologists trying to decipher the remains of a menu card of the restaurant that once was on the topfloor of that strange edicifce. Arougola 105? A deity? A punishment for insulting the babyleaves god? Or perhaps somethig not unlike the Tel El Amarna tax records where ancient clay tablet taxrecords show there once was a harbour town, Jaffa (Ya-Pu) , paying taxes to the Egyptian pharao.

Hasta la victoria siempre - May day in Tel Aviv

Over one thousand people marched from south Tel Aviv's Florentin's community garden plot to Rothshild Boulevard, in a red-flagged first of May demonstration.
Upon arrival at Rothshild, several speakers raised their voices in favour of solidarity amongst workers and against the capitalist and racist approach of the current government.


Among the speakers were the chairwomen of the Open University's labour committee (who have been striking against their terrible employment conditions for over two weeks now) and of the labour committee of the "Andaluse" orchestra, who have not received a salary for over 4 months now. A students rep as well as a representative of the fired train employees (fired because they are Arab's) , social workers as well as Knesset member Dov Khenin spoke about the price paid by Israel's working poor as well as the unemployed.


The somewhat ceremonial ending included the singing of the "Internationale", with Dov Khenin susanboyling it, he's got a good voice actually and he knows the lyrics, unlike some of his audience.

האינטרנציונאל

קום התנערה עם חלכה
עם עבדים ומזי רעב
אש הנקמות הלב ליחכה
לקראת אויב היכון לקרב
עולם ישן עדי היסוד נחרימה
מגב כפוף נפרוק העול
את עולמנו אז נקימה
לא כלום אתמול מחר הכל

זה יהיה קרב
אחרון במלחמת עולם
עם האינטרנציונל
יעור ישגב אדם!
זה יהיה קרב
אחרון במלחמת עולם
עם האינטרנציונל
יעור ישגב אדם!

רק לנו עמלי כפיים
רק לנו עמלי היקום
האדמה וברכתיה
ולכל הולכי בטל לא כלום
אין רב ריבנו ומושיע
לא אל, לא מלך, לא גיבור
בזרוע נטויה נבקיע
אנחנו דרך אל האור

זה יהיה קרב
אחרון במלחמת עולם
עם האינטרנציונל
יעור ישגב אדם!
זה יהיה קרב
אחרון במלחמת עולם
עם האינטרנציונל
יעור ישגב אדם!

עבור הדרור ופדות הרוח
ופרוק העול מגב העם
לבה האש והך בכח
כל עוד ברזל עודנו חם
וכי רעם אבדון יריע
על ראש אויבינו להומם
עלינו שמש דרור תפציע
לשפוך את זוהרה החם

זה יהיה קרב
אחרון במלחמת עולם
עם האינטרנציונל
יעור ישגב אדם!
זה יהיה קרב
אחרון במלחמת עולם
עם האינטרנציונל
יעור ישגב אדם!

Predicting the future, all the way to jail

Jaffa has a number of well-known "coffee readers", women who can tell your future from looking at the brown coffee sludge stains left in your cup after having drunk the coffee. People pay quite a bit for their services and some take it rather seriously.
One of those wise women is Hadra, who built herself a huge castle on the corner of Kedem and HaLimon street, which just shows that witchcraft is a fairly favourable "profession". She must have been doing quite well. that is, until today.

However, i doubt if she's any good at reading her own future, otherwise one wonders why she didn't leave a few days ago.
This morning she and her sons were arrested by a rather large number of policemen, apparently for fraud and tax fraud.
Maybe she doesn't like coffee.

Mahmoud and Namne Shakra - In memoriam

A big round face with smiling eyes and a laughing mouth, almost like a "smiley", that's how i remember my neighbor.
"Remember", the word doesn't fit somehow, i find it difficult to talk of them in the past tense.
Mahmoud and his wife were killed in a car accident last night. They have young kids.

There were many deadly traffic accidents this weekend. Each of the victims leaving a shattered family. But somehow, when you know the people, it becomes very personal.

Each time i saw Mahmoud i smiled, automatically. Smiley.
A car accident, what a waste.

On Constructing 5-Legged Camels

"A camel is a horse designed by a planning committee"

Eco-friendly transportation is important. Period.
Tel Aviv is crowded, traffic jams are hell and the lack of parking space is somewhere way beyond hell. So travelling by bicycle or by public transport makes a lot of sense.

Sort of.
Sometimes.
In some areas.

I use my bike to go from A to B. It's easy, cheap and quick. No parking problems. I'm not so sure it is healthy, due to the awful air quality i breathe while pedalling my way between buses, vespa motor bikes (i read somewhere their exhaust fumes are about as bad as those of a truck, doe to the amount of small particles they emit) and the endless lines of cars standing idle in yet another traffic jam.

However, in some areas it is also dead scary. Dan bus drivers are my worst enemy. Egged drivers come a close second only because there are less of them in the areas where i tend to travel most, not that they are more bike friendly). Jaffa's Jerusalem Boulevard (Nouzha or Pasha in the past) is noteworthy as a very scare road for the audacious cyclist.

The municipality is known for its greenwash policy making: More parking lots , more highways, more huge road crossings of multi-lane free-ways, more cars in short. But they talk green. So they plan bike paths. Which is nice. Or rather, which could be nice.
The only problem being that those who plan them, have not seen a bike close by for years. Nor have they used public transport.
Otherwise, how can one explain the silly bike paths along Ibn Gvirol street? The clash between people waiting at the bus stops or going to and from the bus-stops which are located right on the bike paths is unavoidable. Not even a camel, but a five-legged, blind and deaf camelchik, that's what it is, the Ibn Gvirol bike path. Who could have thought of something so utterly idiotic?

And now they have started planning another bike path along Jaffa's Jerusalem Boulevard. Great, we need one there. Jerusalem Boulevard is one of the scariest places to ride a bike. I try to avoid that road as much as possible. But i cannot. It's central, it's where a lot of services are located, and i sometimes need those.
So a bike path would be great.

And planning it properly is important.

But there is just one small problem. The guys (i suspect they are guys, women wouldn't do it that way) doing the planning, are working on their own, without talking to others also planning in the same street, such as the developers of the light train and the public transport companies who are currently in the process of developing the new public transport system for Jerusalem Boulevard.

Just before Passover i participated in a meeting with the planners of the "light train's" green line, the first line to become active, supposedly in another 3-4 years. Construction has already started in Jaffa's Jerusalem Boulevard. From their presentation (they are very good at PR, that's one thing to be said about them), i realized other public transport as well as bikes do not really interest them. They are seen as a nuisance more than anything else. They are "the competition" and therefore their lives should be made difficult, rather than easy and safe. After all, if you cannot travel easily by bus or by bike, you'll take the light train.

So why cooperate?

As a result several municipal and traffic authorities and green NGO's are each planning their own thing separately and i cannot begin the image the possible result. A cyclist's bad dream, that's for sure.

Identity / A Dress and a Prayer

Five women from Jaffa whose children attend the Weitzman primary school met for a period of 6 months to talk and make art under the guidance of a professional artist, Ziv Peleg- Ben Ze'ev.
Today they opened their exhibition in Ziv's Tel Aviv studio, showing a series of "dresses" representing themselves, their dreams and their prayers.

During the opening a short documentary movie made in the framework of the project, was shown. Each woman, except for Palestinian Astar Saba, told about her experience in the movie.
Astar read out a short statement instead.
All of the participating women went through a significant personal process during the six months of weekly group art work. Except for one woman, Orna Marton, an architect, none were professional artists. They all come from very different backgrounds. But, being women living in Jaffa, parents from kids going to Weitzman, they had a lot to share and to talk about.

People from the art community, the school and from Jaffa in general attended the opening event.

The Weitzman School , a public primary school located in the center of Jaffa, is trying to implement a bi-national and multi-cultural curriculum, is in danger of being closed. I hope the municipality will have the brains to keep it going.

They work with the children AND with their parents. Each class has 2 teachers: a Palestinian and a Jewish teacher. Although the school belongs to the "Jewish public school track", many of its students are Palestinian kids from Jaffa.


The art project is supported by "Mémoire de l'avenir" and "One to One" as well as, ofcourse, the school.

Moufleta Politics

Yafo Gimmel is a mixed and by all standards rather slummy neighbourhood: Palestinian families and poorer Jewish ones (those who can afford it, move out) share dreary apartment blocks, many of them owned by the "Halamish" public housing company. Over the last few years, recent immigrants from Ethiopia have been housed in this very weak place.

The original inhabitants for whom the neighbourhood was constructed were people mostly form Bulgaria and Morocco who were living under harsh and cramped conditions in pre-gentrification Ajami.
They were happy to move out to the new blocks, where they finally had their own bathroom and kitchen (previously they had to share those with several other families).
But the blocks proved to be problematic. Shoddy construction, bad insulation, sheer size and Halamish's poor repair and maintenance standards soon turned the area into a slum.
And right in the middle of that slum there is the "Dake" orange grove, which, in spite of its romantic name grows few oranges: another "favela" like area inhabited by the Dake family, who live thereunder terrible conditions of poverty and neglect, as the municipality refuses to create a "housing plan" for the area and as a result it is impossible to undertake legal construction on the land the family has been owning for centuries. There is no good sewage system and electricity hook up is somewhat, how shall i say it, "primitive". There is much poverty and neglect in all of the area. And where there is poverty, there is crime, mostly drugs related in this case. And violence. And youth gangs of alienated kids who have lost all hope.

Those who can afford it, run away, those who still live there, mostly wish they will be able to run away, one day, perhaps. A mixture of elderly, recent and less recent migrants from Ethiopia and the Ex-Soviet Union, Palestinian families and as of late, ultra right wing yeshiva students, who believe the real struggle is no longer in the West Bank, but in the mixed cities, where they come to "strengthen the Jewish Community" and "to protect it against -God forbid- mixed marriages". Reality being that there are very few of those (less than 10 a year) doesn't bother them in their rhetoric, it sounds "good" and is easy to use when you want to create tension.

And tension exists.

"The Red Field" used to be a neglected football field used for many activities, but football wasn't one of those. Over the last year or so, the field has been beautifully renovated into an open, public sports center with basket ball courts, an out-door gym, table tennis and of course a football field.
After tension arose between the poor kids of next door "Dake" and the housing estates' kids a community worker and a multi-ethnic group of mothers started to meet and try to undertake joint positive activities. Sport and games are a good way of letting off steam and get to know each other. And it seems to be working. Something good appears to be going on in the "Red Field" as it is still known. The municipality is doing something right here.

So they selected the Red Field as the location for the "Mimouna Party". For those unfamiliar, Mimouna originates in Morocco, when, on the end of the last day of Passover the Muslim neighbours would bring their Jewish neighbours the first leavened baked goods which had been forbidden during Passover. Moufleta and colorful marzipan-like sweets are traditional. Over time, in Israel, it was turned into another popular festival of neighbors of all ethnic backgrounds, visiting neighbors and eating lots of the traditional sweets, while listening to music and dancing.

What also has become traditional, is the political ride taken by Israel's politicians who tend to visit the various public festival locations and yesterday's Jaffa version was no different. Mayor Ron Huldai, Gilad Peled (who returned to manage the Mishlama) and others, as well as the distincly Ashkenazi rabi of the yeshiva all spoke their words of unity among the Jews, most of them convienently forgetting the Palestinian presence. The talk was of a "unified city of Tel Aviv, which exists 100 years (right in Jaffa, remember?).
It was rather cold yesterday evening, so most people had dressed warmly, some over or under their traditional Moroccan dress, making a few of them looking litke glitzy stuffed bears. The guests of honour, among them muniipal coalition members Ahmad Mashrawi and Maytal Lehavi as well as ex-mk Nadia Hilou, were sitting in a traditional and very pretty Morocan tent colorfully decorated with cushions and small tables full of goodies, while the children of the hoi polloy had to wait in the cold to receive their freshly made Moufleta.
The musical theme was of the mostly "Anu Banu Artza" type of theme, with the occasional Morocan song thrown in for political correctness.
The area was guarded by border police and the little boys from Dake, who are loud and active (i am talking about 8-10 year old children) were not let in. They "might disturb the peace".