SHATIL Facilitates Effective Protests: Discrimination Against Israeli Ethiopians and Housing Rights in the Mixed Cities

December 17, 2007

Two days after Yediot Achronot exposed the fact that four children of Ethiopian descent were being educated separately in a Petah Tikva school – and even sent to recess and bussed back and forth to school separately – Ethiopian leaders invited SHATIL to a meeting to decide how to tackle the issue. The participants decided a public protest was a priority. SHATIL went into high gear on several levels: advising the representatives of Ethiopian Jewish Community Organizations (Netzigut) on the organization of the public demonstration, writing a document enumerating demands to the government, giving advice on advocacy and attracting media coverage.

Hundreds of Israelis of Ethiopian descent as well as natives decried “racism” and even “apartheid” and blocked traffic outside Petah Tikva’s city hall at the December 12th demonstration. The event was featured on several television and radio stations, newspapers and Internet sites.

The original Yediot article was followed by others describing separate school and kindergarten classes for children of Ethiopian descent in other Petah Tikva locations and other cities.

Demonstrators called for Petah Tikva Mayor Yitzhak Ohion to resign and used the demonstration to protest racism in Israeli society in general.

Two days earlier, representatives from SHATIL’s Mixed Cities project along with activists from the Ramle and Lod Housing Forums and Wadi Ara (Northern Triangle region) marched to mark International Human Rights Day and to protest conditions in Israel's mixed cities. The marchers called attention to Article 25 of the UN General Assembly’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services...”

The protest focused on the latest wave of demolitions and evictions in Israel’s mixed cities, unrecognized villages in the Negev, the Triangle, and south Tel Aviv-Jaffa in addition to calling for a change in policy.  The marchers began their marathon in the unrecognized Railway neighborhood of Ramle before continuing on through Lod’s Ta’ayush neighborhood, Dahmash and south Tel Aviv-Jaffa.   At the rally, members of the Jaffa People’s Committee, which initiated the event, joined together with residents from the Triangle region to protest the inhumane demolition and eviction policies affecting Arabs and Jews alike. 

In the last five years, 160 homes have been demolished in Ramle and Lod. In Jaffa, 500 homes are under threat of eviction and demolition, and in south Tel Aviv, many residents have received eviction notices. Similarly in Wadi Ara, the threat of demolition looms ominously, echoing the situation in the Negev where hundreds of homes have been demolished in the last few years and thousands more live under similar threats.

Director of the SHATIL Mixed Cities project Buthayna Dabit commented: “We believe that there’s a vital need to create a broad front of activism from civil and human rights organizations and from political parties to stop the wave of demolitions and evictions…  This protest is an expression of such a front, in which Arabs and Jews stand together in the face of the property ‘sharks’ and their links with the municipalities and planning authorities, which make the evictions in Jaffa and south Tel Aviv possible.”