Published: 26 July 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
ELANA SZTOKMAN talks to residents at the centre of a housing dispute based on whether Palestinians abandoned their homes when Israel was established.
Jerry As-Hamati is a fifth-generation resident of Jaffa. But the house that his grandfather purchased in the 1940s before the state of Israel was established is now being claimed by Amidar, the public housing unit of the Israel Land’s Authority.
His brother, his brother’s children, and his aunt, who live there, are facing a government-demanded ultimatum: buy the house from Amidar or leave.
“This is our family home,” As-Hamati said. “It holds our family history. It’s where the people in my family were born, where they raised their children, where people died before Israel even existed. And they are trying to take that away from us.”
As-Hamati’s family is one of an estimated 1000 Palestinian families in Jaffa who live under threat of immediate eviction. They have been warned that if they do not pay sums determined by Amidar – sums based on estimated market values in what is one of the most expensive cities in the world – then they will be forced to leave the homes that many have been living in for decades and which they say they already own.
“The homes we are talking about are Palestinian homes from pre-1947 that the government just took...Now, 74 years later, we are having a reckoning."
Amir Badran, lawyer for Jaffa residents
The cause of this situation is the 1950 Law of Abandoned Properties, in which the then-newly formed Israeli government granted itself guardianship over properties that had been owned by Arabs in 1947 and that the government determined to have been “abandoned”.
Why, how, and whether many of these properties were abandoned was decided by the Israel Lands Authority, which granted the public housing authority broad rights over selling, valuing, renovating, or destroying the properties.
