Judaizing Jaffa?
Arab residents of Jaffa are worried that a new plan by the Bemuna Co. to build housing for religious Jews is a bid to Judaize their neighborhood and drive them out, the Washington Post reports:
The Bemuna project has exposed some of the fault lines that continue to separate Israel's Arab and Jewish citizens.
Arab residents of Jaffa, many of them descendants of those who stayed through the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, say poorer families are being forced to leave by rising property values and the expiration of long-term tenancy agreements set up by Israel after it seized the homes of Arabs who fled or were expelled.
Bemuna, they say, has added a religious dimension, using land acquired from the Israeli government and relying on Israeli housing laws that allow sellers to discriminate against Jews or Arabs in private property transactions
"The ideology behind this is really dangerous," said Asma Agbarieh Zahalka, a local political activist. "They want to Judaize Jaffa and ruin what remains of coexistence."
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Ross Nicholson
05/26/09 03:37 PM
Israel had to allow religious discrimination in land sales because the Arabs insisted. Jews become citizens there much more easily than avowed terrorists. The Arabs wave foreign flags on Jewish soil, their feeble sons and daughters blow themselves up in ice cream shops. The intifada has been a virtual state of war against Israel that no other country would tolerate. I am an American. I have Jewish friends and, yes, Arab friends (before they killed themselves in 9-11). The Jewish people try to understand. The Arabs--despite their good manners and smiles--just hate unreasonably.