Forgotten No More

Ibrahim Abu Shindi stands in front of Jaffa’s Arab-Jewish Community Center, which he directs. Shindi’s family remained in the city, though most Arabs fled in 1948 during the War of Independence. Joshua Mitnick

Ibrahim Abu Shindi stands in front of Jaffa’s Arab-Jewish Community Center, which he directs. Shindi’s family remained in the city, though most Arabs fled in 1948 during the War of Independence. Joshua Mitnick

by Joshua mitnick
Israel Correspondent

From the Tel Aviv beach, the view southward to the stone tower and ramparts of Jaffa’s Old City always strikes a romantic contrast to the modern cityscape of the 100-year-old town next door. A visit to Tel Aviv’s parent would reveal the neglect lying just outside of the Old City, with streets narrow and uneven and buildings sooty and crumbling.

But recently, Jaffa has been rediscovered. Some 1.3 billion shekels (about $350 million) in municipal investment have helped spur a wave of gentrification. The Ottoman-era clock tower at the city’s entrance has gotten a facelift, while new cobblestone roads have upgraded the flea market known as the “Shuk Ha’pishpishim.”

Investors have responded in kind. Large display windows of clothing retailers opposite the old

clock tower have replaced crowded mom-and-pop kiosks. In Ajami, a seaside neighborhood just south of the Old City, developers have taken over small hovels from welfare-supported residents and built them into multiple-floor luxury apartments with touches of Oriental architecture and a sunset view.

After decades, it seems Tel Aviv’s success is trickling down to Jaffa. But for the Arab residents — who make up a third of Jaffa’s 60,000 residents, but only 4 percent of the city’s overall population — it’s a mixed bag.

“They’re investing in Jaffa, but there is a disconnect” with Tel Aviv, said Kamal Aghbariyeh, the chairman of the Ajami neighborhood association. “I say that we need to take away the dash between Tel Aviv and Jaffa [the city is officially known as Tel Aviv-Jaffa]. It would give the feeling that there is desire for collective things, and not just infrastructure investment.

“Still,” Aghbariyeh continued, “I think the mayor [Ron Huldai] today understands that a lot better than any time before.”

The “disconnect” that Aghbariyeh complained of seems rooted in Tel Aviv’s narrative of itself as a city whose starting point is placed at a land lottery in the sand dunes north of Jaffa. There is little acknowledgement of Tel Aviv’s forerunner and Jaffa’s cultural and economic importance in pre-state Palestine.

At the time of the establishment of the new Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv, Jaffa had already racked up thousands of years as a port city for the Holy Land, boasted a new railroad station, and had an international reputation for its exported fruits. The headquarters of the Anglo Palestine Bank, today Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest bank, had been open already for at least six years before ground was broken for Tel Aviv.
“To assume this city was built out of the sand is a bit of a joke,” said Mati Broudo, a Tel Aviv restaurateur. “Its success lies in its connection to Jaffa. It would not have gained its success as a commercial hub had it not been its proximity to Jaffa.”

The fortunes of Jaffa from the 1920s on seem inverse to those of Tel Aviv. Arab violence prompted Jewish businesses to shift to the new city to the north, and a new port being developed in Tel Aviv helped its fortunes. Most of the approximately 80,000 Arabs living in Jaffa in 1948 fled during the War of Independence, fearing the war and expecting to return with Palestine under Arab control.
The grandfather of Ibrahim Abu Shindi, today the director of the Jaffa’s Arab-Jewish Community Center, was one of about 3,000 Jaffa residents to remain behind. “He decided that he lived here and he would die here,” said Abu Shindi. “Others were afraid; they said, ‘Let’s get out of here and in two weeks we’ll come back.’”

Once the Shindi family owned dozens of acres of citrus orchards. Today, his relatives are spread throughout the Middle East — from Gaza to Jordan to Lebanon. Despite that, Abu Shindi said relations between the Jaffa Arabs and the families of Bulgarian Jews immigrants were intimate.
But even though the community center is dedicated to coexistence, Abu Shindi says the celebration in Jaffa of the Tel Aviv centennial is limited to one event in the old Jaffa port, which is also being renovated.
“With all due respect, the history of Zionism, Jabotinsky, and the Haganah doesn’t touch us,” he said.
Today, local Arab officials from Jaffa say that more money needs to be invested in education for the children that account for half the Arab population here. They also want the municipality to do a better job of creating affordable housing for low-income families who are getting squeezed out of Jaffa by high-end developers.
In recent years, some 500 families in Ajami have been threatened with eviction by the Israel Land Authority for missing rent payments or expanding their houses illegally. Arab activists accuse the government of trying to pressure local residents to leave the neighborhood so they can resell the public property at a hefty profit to real estate developers.

“Excuse me for the expression, but I call this ‘economic transfer,’” said Aghbariyeh. “Instead of a gun, they use money to get you to leave,” referring to offers from real estate developers.

The Tel Aviv municipality was indeed mistaken to ignore Jaffa, conceded Dror Amir, who led Jaffa’s borough council until three years ago. For decades, Jaffa was just seen as raw real estate rather than an “integral” district of the combined city, he said. But now, Jaffa is benefiting from the link to a city government that is among the best run and richest in the country.

“There are positive changes,” Amir continued. “There’s an improvement in education. I see there is a change in the infrastructure and the environment,” he said. “There are developments in tourism. Overnight, there is a blossoming of business in Jaffa, and people are arriving there.”

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