Published: 8 April 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
On a trip back to his childhood home town, MATI SHEMOELOF is struck by the blurring of old divides that have slowly occurred while he’s been living in Berlin
ON MY LAST VISIT to Haifa six months ago, when I first saw Israeli Arabs citizens in Jewish neighbourhoods, I thought it was just an exception. I walked by a café terrace in the Denya precinct near the university of Haifa and suddenly heard “shukran”, Arabic for thank you.
But then I also heard the sound of Arabic in a fancy restaurant in Carmelia, and in Vardia saw Arab Israelis parking their cars in front of fashionable houses. Until then, I it was only Masada Street in the neighbourhood of Hadar where bars were open to Jews and Arabs and others.
Has something changed? Is the city returning to what once was a Palestinian city with a minority of Jews, and Christians?
I grew up in the Carmelia and Ramat Shaul neighbourhoods of Haifa in the 1970s and 1980s. But in all my years in the mixed city of Haifa, I didn’t see Arabs there.
The Jewish neighborhoods were closed as NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) communities to privileged neighbourhoods, which retained their ethnic-national character and repelled the entry of the Arab-Israeli (or Palestinian-Israeli, as some say) civilian population.
But as I grew older, I learned that Haifa once was a thriving modern Palestinian city. My grandfather’s family from Iran had a trade business in Haifa and eventually settled at the Carmel Mountain. But with the 1948 War of Independence, many of the city’s Arab residents were uprooted. Many settled in other Arab countries where they never received citizenship and looked from a far at the city that was their home.
The remaining Haifa Arab citizens were ordered to live inside the Wadi Ninsas ghetto, which became the official “face” of their community. Only a few other neighbourhoods were allowed to remain, such as the only mosque located on Mount Carmel - Mahmood Mosque, in Kababir. Or on the outskirts of Haifa, you can still see the only Palestinian village left after the Nakba, Fureidis.
Has this separation now just vanished? The Jewish citizens of Haifa were accustomed to seeing the Arab citizens as second-class citizens. It was like an unwritten law: Arab citizens have never been allowed to enter other neighbourhoods throughout Haifa, as well as other mixed cities.
There was talk in other cities that Jews should not sell apartments to Arabs, for example in the city of Safed, or Afula. Palestinians wanted to live beyond their neighbourhood, but it was hard to get out.
If the young generation has better access to new places, it probably comes from the forces of capitalism. The constant rise in housing prices means Jewish citizens are willing to rent to Arab citizens, who are in return willing to pay the high price of apartments in order to have more choices. Thus, neo-liberalism, which allows anyone anywhere as long as you pay, is one of the catalysts for this change.
My childhood was a time of more social and cultural equality, low rents, affordable childcare and the like. But the Arabs had no chance.
I know this economically driven change will not completely solve the problem of racism and discrimination. But this phenomenon is happening in several places. It has been already reflected by the 2007 TV sitcom Arab Work written by the Arab-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua, who had imagined and lived his Palestinian life in a Jewish part of Jerusalem.
And today, we have a Muslim conservative party in the current mixed government, and the leader of the opposition Arab Joint List party Ayman Odeh, came from Haifa.
I returned to my home in Berlin to tell the good news to a Palestinian friend from Haifa, who had also emigrated to Berlin. However, he was more sceptical, saying there was an abyss between Jewish and Arab citizens, because the Nakba was not yet recognised.
Maybe he is right, and I am too optimistic. But at least I don’t have to embrace neoliberalism to have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of moving to a new neighbourhood. social mixing effects. That does not really solve the problem.
Photo: Hadar precinct in Haifa (Jessica Steinberg)
