“A city is built for its citizens – a concept so simple but so far removed [from reality]” said Hadash MK Dov Khenin regarding the current reality faced by the Arab residents of Israel’s mixed Arab-Jewish cities. Khenin was one of some 15 speakers at the recent Land Day conference, Housing and Land Deprivation in Jaffa and other Mixed Cities – the Reality and the Challenges, hosted by NIF grantee Al Rabitha (League for the Arabs of Jaffa).

“Housing is a political and not a technical matter,” said Khenin. “The events in Akko a few months ago were but a warning sign of things to come… and unless the reality changes, Israel’s mixed cities will be on the front line.” (Khenin was referring to the violence that erupted in Akko last Yom Kippur between the Arab and Jewish communities.)

House demolition in Ramle-Lod

A little like a Fellini landscape, one by one, the familiar faces of those who have partnered with SHATIL in its past work in the mixed cities, and those who are partnering with us now in the new phase of developing a national level strategy, addressed the audience, echoing each other’s concerns that democracy rather than demography was under threat. Most of the speakers also focused on contemporary gentrification processes that are depleting mixed cities such as Jaffa and Akko of their poorer, mainly Arab residents. The ways in which hundreds of eviction orders of so-called protected tenants and their heirs from Development Authority properties are given legal justification by the establishment – in order to free the properties up for sale to wealthy, and invariably Jewish buyers – was also discussed. 
 
The occasion offered a timely opportunity for some of SHATIL's current partners and associates, including Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights and the Technion Lab for Urban Planning with the Community, to present their recently completed report on housing distress among Jaffa’s Arab community. This report, focusing on the Development Authority properties and the protected tenants, was produced in collaboration with yet another SHATIL Mixed Cities partner, the Jaffa Popular Committee, a coalition of which SHATIL is also a member. The coalition has contributed to a qualitative change in the dialogue with the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality, so that potential solutions, such as affordable housing, are now on the agenda. 

Dr. Daniel Monterescu, author of the SHATIL survey on housing needs in Jaffa, looked beyond the current reality toward a moment in time when building projects, neighborhoods, common cultural and educational spaces in these cities are shared – and therefore truly ‘mixed’.