by Adam LeBor
The new generation of Arab Palestinian activists, such as Sami Abou-Shehade, the grandson of the Jaffa fisherman Ismail Abou-Shehade, are more concerned with changing the very nature of the Israeli state. Bespectacled, articulate and highly intelligent, Sami is a postgraduate student at Tel Aviv University, specialising in Middle East history. Higher education is one sector of Israeli society where the Arab minority has a solid presence: nationally, Arab students make up 8.1 per cent of university students, and 28 per cent of students at teacher training colleges.8 Arab students even study at the College of Judea and Samaria, at the Ariel settlement on the West Bank. Sami skilfully utilises the freedoms of Israel’s democracy to espouse the Palestinian cause. In his spare time he conducts lengthy interviews with Jaffa’s elderly Arabs, to capture their memories of the city before the Nakba and build a library of oral history, and he gives ‘alternative’ guided tours of Jaffa from the Palestinian perspective. ‘In many ways Israeli society is not modern,’ he says. ‘Israel sees all of its Jewish citizens as a big family, and that is how it deals with them. For example, when there is a car accident, there is five minutes on the news about everyone who was killed. It is a tragedy when people die in car accidents, but in most states the television news does not list the names and ages of everyone who died, and then film the funeral. Israeli Jews think of the state as some kind of family business.’
This paternal approach by its nature excludes Israeli Arabs. ‘This is a problem. When you are not part of the family, and you are excluded, then you don’t deserve to have all your rights. The state gives you part of your rights, but as though this is more than you deserve.’ The same mix of paternalism and exclusion is also evident at university, says Sami. ‘I am treated differently in two ways. They try to be nice to me, because I am the only Arab in class, and they want to feel good about themselves, so they try to help. In Israel everyone talks about politics all the time, but when the professors ask the students what they think, they ignore me. If I have something to say, it’s not important. I am not allowed to be part of any serious political discourse. It makes me feel that I am living in a racist society, every day. Still, I am articulate enough to participate in the discussions whether they want me to or not. I have enough things to say, and I know how to say them. But most Arab students are afraid to say what they think, or act on their feelings in anything to do with politics at the university, because anyone official, a teacher, professor or doctor could get them into trouble.’
For Sami’s generation, like his grandfather Ismail’s, Shin Bet still casts a long shadow. Arab students may study alongside Jews, but they are carefully monitored, says Sami.9 ‘We know that Shin Bet monitors everything that we do, everything we publish, everything we say, all the time. For example, we are not allowed to demonstrate inside the university, so we demonstrate at the entrance. Shin Bet comes and takes photographs of us all the time, and asks us questions. There are Shin Bet people living in the student houses, together with Arab students. The state makes it legitimate to deal with us as though we are enemies, no matter that we are one of the quietest minorities in the world. The state should stop dealing with its citizens as belonging to a religious or national community. The state’s function is to give services to its citizens, that’s all.’
There is at least one episode of Jaffa’s history which closed peacefully. As the millennium came to an end Yoram Aharoni, owner of the Tiv coffee and spice shop, made up his mind and sent out an invitation to a small gathering. Yoram was seventy-five in 1999, and already working half-days. His son Ofer had worked in the shop for four years, but now wanted to make his own way in the world. Yoram recalls: ‘I decided on Rosh Hashana [the Jewish New Year] that I would close the shop. If you don’t decide a date, you stay open until Passover the next year, and carry on and on. I put up a sign, so that everyone would know that this was the final decision. About twenty people came, neighbours. Only Tiv and one other shop had been there so long, all the rest had changed. Tiv was an institution, not just a shop.’
The poignant gathering marked the end of an era. Tiv had provided for waves of immigrants, from Bucharest to Benghazi, its wares giving the comforting smells and tastes of home. Even when the newcomers left Jaffa they still returned, says Yoram. ‘When they moved to Bat Yam and Holon they did not buy less. They bought more, because they came back to stock up.’ Yoram and his shop are still missed in Jaffa, and when he returns to visit the city, his former and his shop customers plead for him to reopen. ‘Tiv was there for fifty years. The first customers came with small children, then the children grew up, and they came with their children. We were like a family. People still come up to me and ask me where they can buy spices now, the best spices like I used to sell.’
Tiv’s closure also marked the end of a chapter in the history of both Israel and Jaffa: that of the Bulgarian Aliyah, and Yoram’s generation who had struggled to establish a Jewish state. Yoram and his wife Rina took up arms against the British during the Mandate era. He fought in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. He even volunteered for active service during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, but was politely turned down. Yoram now looks back on his life with calm satisfaction. Jaffa is no longer Sofia-by-the-sea. Bulgarian is rarely heard on Raziel Street now, and the cafés and social clubs have almost all vanished. But the absorption of the Bulgarians is testimony to their contribution in building Israel. ‘I am an example of a Bulgarian. I do not push myself. Once I was close to people in the government, like the prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, who was also in Lehi. I had contacts in the army and the government. I could have got a comfortable job in the foreign ministry. But I never asked for anything and I don’t regret it. In Lehi and in the army I did what I needed to do, and I did a lot. I gave my best years to Israel. You can say that I can be proud of this.’ Yoram kept true to his principles, fought for his people, and provided for his family, which is as much as any man can hope for. Neither Yoram nor his son Ofer would fight in any more wars, but as a pioneer of Jaffa’s renovation, Ofer would encounter a different kind of struggle with his Arab neighbours.
23
Separation
We used to live together in Jaffa like brothers, but now all that has vanished. Jewish and Arab children almost don’t mix, and they do not know each other any more. It happened without anyone realising.
Behira Buchbinder, Jewish resident
of Ajami and community activist
There were no more queues at the Abulafia bakery for its fresh breads flavoured with hyssop and olive oil, crispy cheese pies, and trays of sticky baklava. The fish restaurants along Jaffa’s coast, where once it seemed all of Tel Aviv would decamp for Saturday lunch, stood silent, that day’s catch wilting on piles of melted ice. Even the Ajami humous and pitta bread cafés were empty. Tel Aviv’s Jews had voted with their feet, and with their wallets. Like the violence of 1921, the October 2000 riots fed the deepest, secret fears of even many liberal-leftists, that underneath all the talk of co-existence, the Arabs hated them and wanted to drive them out. Tel Aviv’s response was swift, and coordinated: Jaffa was boycotted. It was not an official decision, but in a way it did not need to be. It was a reflex, visceral and automatic.
And for Jaffa’s Arabs, that in turn confirmed that there was no place for them in Israeli society, that the Jews wanted nothing more than for them to leave. So the cycle continued, and those caught in the middle, like Khamis Abulafia, wavered between frustration and despair. ‘It was the most difficult time in our lives. There was a break between the Jews and the Arabs. We felt that they had gone behind our backs and turned against us. We believe our bakery is a special model of co-existence. We respect the Jewish festival of Passover and we close the bakery here and in Tel Aviv, and our other businesses.1 You can imagine how much business we could do if we stayed open in this week. My family thought this could not happen to us, because we were out of this game. We thought there was a consensus about the Abulafias, that we were a model of co-existence between the two sides.�
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The Abulafias were wrong. There were even mutterings among the more radical Arabs that the Abulafias were too close to the Israeli establishment, and some refused to buy from the bakery. But whatever had been the family’s position in the shifting sands of local politics, it was of no help to them now. In good times the Abulafia bakeries employed more than 120 people, including many Israeli Jews, making up to 100,000 baked items a day. Production plummeted by 90 per cent. Takings also plunged at the Abulafia restaurant in Old Jaffa by 90 per cent, from around one million shekels a month (£122,000) to around one hundred thousand shekels (£12,200). If the Jews of Tel Aviv intended to repay Jaffa for the riots, they were successful. Still the footsoldiers of coexistence marched on: Khamis began to hold meetings at the Abulafia restaurant to rebuild bridges. ‘We believe that when you talk, when you make conversation, even small talk, you can overcome prejudice and hate.’ It saddened both Khamis and his friend, the schoolteacher Ali Goughti, that many Jews in Tel Aviv had never met an Arab socially.2 It was only through human contact, they believed, that the wall of prejudice and indifference could be broken down. The school curriculum teaches very little about Arab society, says Ali, who lectures young conscripts before they begin their military service. ‘When I talk to them, they tell me that I am not one of the Arabs they’ve heard about until now, or the ones they think they know about. They say it was easier before they met me, easier to hate us, and the Arab people.’
* * *
One Friday night in October 2000, a few yards from the Abulafia restaurant, in the ground floor of the Ottoman Old Seray building in Old Jaffa, a procession of Jews and Arabs were taking the stage at the Arabic-Hebrew Theatre. Founded in 1997, the theatre consists of two separate companies, El-Saraya, directed by Adib Jahshan, a Christian Arab who lives in Jaffa, and its Hebrew equivalent, Local Theatre, directed by Igal Ezraty, who commutes from Tel Aviv. They share a single space, but enjoy artistic autonomy. Some productions are in Arabic, others in Hebrew, and some are co-productions in both languages. That night the theatre was hosting an open-microphone night called ‘In Jaffa We Talk’,3 while not far from the angry, passionate debate Jews and Arabs were killing each other. Two army reservists who took a wrong turn near Ramallah were arrested by Palestinian police. A mob broke into the station and beat the soldiers to death. The body of one was chained to a car and dragged through the streets, while the killers held up their bloody hands at a window to the cheering crowd outside. In a further twist, some Israeli Arabs were arrested for helping suicide bombers, while others were killed in the explosions, which did not discriminate.
There was perhaps less talking than shouting that night at the theatre, but that did not matter, for the darkened auditorium was a safety valve for the audience’s frustration and anger. It quickly divided along familiar lines: when Igal Ezraty read aloud the names of Israeli soldiers who had been killed, Arabs protested; when he read the names of Palestinian and Israeli Arab fatalities, some Jews were angry. But the evening passed without violence or gunfire, and in those hate-filled days, that was an achievement in itself. ‘We said to Arabs and Jews, you have the stage, and the freedom to say what you want,’ recalls Adib Jahashan. ‘You can say what you like, what you don’t like; what you are for, and what you are against. It was magnificent. People threw out all kind of things that were inside them. Afterwards it was like the air was let out of a balloon. Everything was released. We sat together, we drank tea and coffee and talked as friends. We showed that if you are against somebody, you don’t have to kill him. You can talk to him.’ Weekly coffee-house evenings followed, with music, comedy and other performances. Just as valuable were the discussions afterwards, as Jews and Arabs sat together.
An eloquent, hospitable man in his early sixties, Adib was born in Haifa, and now lives in Jaffa with his wife and three daughters. Adib was the first Arab to study theatre in Israel, and he graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 1972. He first worked in Haifa, specialising in child psycho-drama – a form of therapy – before moving to Jaffa. Now he manages a children’s hostel by day, and works for the Arab-Jewish theatre company as a volunteer. Both theatre companies are supported by Tel Aviv municipality and divide expenses such as electricity and local taxes equally. But it is a very limited kind of equality. The Hebrew company receives one million shekels a year, whereas Adib’s group receives only 200,000 shekels (£24,400) a year, and that even after its budget was doubled in 2004. That same year the Tel Aviv municipality awarded both men a shared prize for their contribution to co-existence and artistic collaboration between Arabs and Jews.
‘The theatre is also a symbol, a return to Jaffa’s golden era, before 1948, when it was the cultural capital of Palestine,’ says Adib. ‘We start with the children, we invite schools to come with the pupils and teachers. We make all kinds of theatre festivals, for women, for Arabs and Jews. We give back something of what Jaffa used to be. We add something to people’s lives here.’ For Jaffa’s Arab community, the theatre and its café is more than a place to watch drama. Israeli Arab society, although slowly changing, remains deeply conservative; Jaffa lacks places for the young to meet. There is only one European café where people can sit, drink coffee and chat. Young women, in particular, would not go to a traditional Arab coffee house, while the tourist traps of Old Jaffa are too expensive. The theatre is a comfortable meeting point for both men and women, Arabs and Jews.
Despite his budget problems, Adib readily agrees that he has far more artistic freedom in Israel than he would in an Arab country. On a visit to Amman he asked the large Jaffan exile community there to help him stage Memory, a one-man show by an Israeli Arab playwright about the Palestinians who remained in Israel after the Nakba. It was, needless to say, very critical of Israel. Adib was amazed to learn that the play would have to be submitted to the Jordanian censor. ‘Even after I told them this play has been performed in Israel more than fifty times, in Jerusalem, in Haifa, in Jaffa and other places, they still insisted that it didn’t matter. They told me that when the answer comes back from the censor, they would contact me. We still did not get an answer, which is itself the answer.’ There are no such problems staging controversial works in Israel. In 2004 El-Saraya staged The Masked, by the Israeli playwright Ilan Hatzor. The Masked was the first Arab production to confront some of the most sensitive issues among Israel’s Arab minority: collaboration with the Israeli government, dual identity, betrayal and divided loyalty.
The very existence of Jaffa’s Arabic-Hebrew Theatre is a political statement. Both at home in Jaffa or on tour abroad – in Germany and England, Egypt and Armenia – it is testimony to the existence of another Israel, one where Arabs and Jews can work and even create great art together. ‘This is the only sane place in Israel,’ says Igal Ezraty. ‘I am not so naive as to think a theatre can change people’s views, but it has an effect, like other aspects of culture. It is an island, where every morning Jews and Arabs come and work together. The fact that we are here has a strong effect, sometimes more than the plays or the shows themselves.’ A wiry, intensely political man, Igal has long been active in the peace movement. In 1982 he was one of the first members of Yesh Gvul (‘There is a limit’), the group of Israeli soldiers who refused to serve in Lebanon.4 ‘I saw that they lied to me when I went to Lebanon in 1982, that this was a political war, that the Syrians did not want to fight us. I told my commanding officer that I did not want to go back. He released me, because otherwise he would have to send me to trial. They told me that I was betraying my friends, but I could not return, for political and moral reasons.’ Igal also stuck to his principles when he was called up for duty in the West Bank during the first Intifada in 1987. This time his new commanding officer was less sympathetic. Igal was twice sentenced to a month in military prison.
The answer, says Igal, is for Israel to be ‘a state of all its citizens’. Among Israeli Arabs this is a commonplace, everyday argument. But it remains a minority position among Israel
i Jews, albeit one slowly moving away from the fringe into the leftist mainstream. For the simple-sounding phrase ‘a state of all its citizens’ is in fact revolutionary. It means, essentially, the de-Zionisation of Israel, the removal of privileges given to Jews, such as the Law of Return that guarantees automatic Israeli citizenship, and the restrictions that prevent Arabs from buying land owned or administered by the state. The theory posits that Israel would keep its strong bonds with Diaspora Jewry, but would be a Hebrew, rather than Jewish, state. It would not merge with any future Palestinian state and would keep its current borders. Instead Israel would evolve into a ‘normal’ country in which all of its citizens – whether Jewish, Christian and Muslim – would enjoy full and equal rights. Israeli identity would be based not on being Jewish, but on the bonds of shared contemporary and historical experience: living on the same territory, commercial, family and social connections, the use of modern Hebrew and – eventually – Arabic culture and langauge.
Once the Arab minority felt sufficiently connected to this Israel, with a real stake in society, the state and its future, they too would serve in the army. This is also known as the ‘post-Zionist’ position, which argues essentially that Zionism’s mission is completed, as the Jewish state now exists and has done for more than fifty years. The question is, now what? Igal explains: ‘I feel I have more in common with the Arabs of Jaffa than with religious Jews. I believe there should be equality between Jews and Arabs. I am not a Zionist in the sense that I believe the work of Zionism is finished. The Jewish state was an answer for what Hitler did; they had to solve the problem of the Jews in Europe. They came here, and they are here, but we don’t need a Jewish state any more. Israel should be a democratic secular state, like Switzerland, or any other country with more than one language and culture.’
