The Unknown History of Jaffa

I had to look up the meaning of a new word for me, "palimpsest" and reading a long drawn out technical description about it being about the recycling of parchment in the old days by erasing or scraping them to be reused, I realized that it was used in sh's article to shed light on the erasure of Jaffa from the history of TA and its centennial celebrations; Tel Aviv had been quick to annex Jaffa in 51 for its prized real estate and to erase what Jaffa had been to the Palestinians. It is therefore not surprising that TA omitted any inclusion of Jaffa in the celebrations undoubtedly to avoid shedding light on what it has done to it.

The writing of Israel's short history is filled with slogan-based misconceptions and disinformation such as the malarky about Palestine being a land without a people or that it was a land inhabited by illiterate shepherds or that was overun by bedouin migrants from neighbouring Arab lands after Israel had declared its statehood. This history is clung-to for dear life because it explains away that there was no such thing as a Palestinian people and thereby, the Jews did not really take anything away from anybody since there was no one take it away from.

It wasn't really that way, of course; Sami Abu Shehadeh and Fadi Shbaytah, residents of Jaffa and members of the Jaffa Popular Committee for the Defence of Land and Housing Rights wrote an extensive piece on the history of Jaffa that appeared in the Electronic Intifada of February 2009. The following excerpt taken from their article deals mostly with the history of Jaffa before the Jewish militants got their hands on it; they wrote:

Jaffa was the largest city in historic Palestine during the British Mandate with more than 80,000 Palestinian inhabitants and another 40,000 in the surrounding area. Between the UN Partition Resolution of 1947 and the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist military forces had displaced 95% of the Palestinian population of Jaffa and neighbouring areas.

Before the Nakba of 1948, Jaffa was the center of the Palestinian economy that had been built mostly around the cultivation of citrus fruit and principally oranges. By the 1930s, it was exporting millions of citrus crates to the rest of the world and providing jobs to thousands. With the success of the citrus exports, the city saw important growth in related sectors, from banks to land and sea transportation enterprises, to import and export firms. As the city grew, Jaffa's entrepreneurs began developing industrial production with the opening of metal-working factories and others producing glass, ice, cigarettes, textiles, sweets, transportation-related equipment, mineral and carbonated water and various foodstuffs.

In addition to commerce and industry, a third major pillar of Jaffa's economy was tourism. As this industry grew, so did its communications infrastructure, and the transportation network connecting it to the rest of Palestine and the Arab world. More investments and jobs were also created for Jaffa's residents through the increasing number of hotels, transportation companies, and the growing number of tourism-related services.

Jaffa was also the cultural capital of Palestine, being home to tens of the most important newspapers and publication houses in the country. The most important and ornate cinemas were in Jaffa, as were tens of athletic clubs and cultural societies, like the Orthodox Club and the Islamic Club that have themselves become historic sites still testifying to the city's cultural history. During the Second World war, the British Mandate authorities moved the headquarters of the Near east broadcast studios to Jaffa, the studios becoming the cultural hub in the city from 1941 to 1948. With the growing cultural importance of Jaffa came increasing cultural exchange and interconnections with the main cultural centers in the region such as Cairo and Beirut, which further established the city as a cultural minaret in the region, lovingly dubbed the Bride of the Sea.

The story of Jaffa's ongoing Nakba is the story of the transformation of this thriving modern urban center into a marginalized neighbourhood suffering from poverty, discrimination, gentrification, crime and demolition since the initial wave of mass expulsion in 1948 to the present day.

And so ends this tragic recounting of Jaffa's history that Tel Aviv is trying to sweep under the rug. How the Israelis went about destroying this vibrant and lovely city can be found in the same article at:

Jaffa: From Eminence to Ethnic Cleansing

by Sami Abu Shehadeh and Fadi Shbaytah

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10338.shtml

Our Palimpsest Lifestyle

I live in Israel. The city of Tel Aviv, Israel's Big Orange, began celebrating its centenary last April. This means that at this point we are five months into the year-long schedule of special centennial events.

When advance posters came out last spring I wondered how Jaffa, which was absorbed into Tel Aviv in the 1950s and is mentioned in the Book of Jonah, to name just one biblical source, would be handled in the context of the celebration's time-frame. Particularly as I had previously noticed that on the tourist ministry's explanatory historical placard near the refurbished port the 7 or 800 years the population was predominantly Arab is barely mentioned (despite the two stone mosques that dominate its skyline). Here's a list of the special commemorative city walks mapped out in honour of the centennial:

White route

Blue route

Note that in the blurb, Jaffa's residents prior to Tel Aviv's existence are said to have been "impoverished Egyptian immigrants", "migrant workers" and "affluent Christians". The seashore, these walks tell us, was an "important vacation spot for local Arab residents", this presumably intended to show that what local Arabs there were were not from Jaffa. The port is said to be the oldest in the world and we see reference to Andromeda rock in Greek mythology and the German Templers. A sideways look at the unexplained al-Manshiyeh quarter, in which the picturesque Hasan Bek mosque is found, tells you neither when it was built (it's older than Tel Aviv) nor who its residents were. What you read is that after the minaret (inexplicably?) collapsed, it was rebuilt to twice its former height but it doesn't say why.

The article from which the text below is extracted illustrates the problem well. It tells the story of John Steinbeck's family, why they came to Jaffa and the tragic circumstances (for which 5 Arabs were arrested for rape, murder and pillage) because of which they left.

Its last paragraph shows how much richer Tel Aviv culture would be if only the layering and the neighborhood of Manshiyeh were explained properly, the word Arab was not so loaded and we could take on board that some of those sand dunes were inhabited.

Eight years after the community on Mount Hope was dismantled, the American Colony, headed by George Adams, was established, but most of the community members left two years later. The Templers came to Palestine in 1868 and settled on the ruins of the American Colony, but in 1871 they built the new community of Sarona, next to the present day Defense Ministry complex in Tel Aviv. The neighborhood of Manshiyeh was established north of the Jaffa walls in the early 1860s, and was settled by Egyptian farmers. In 1887, the neighborhood of Neveh Zedek was built, and 22 years later Tel Aviv was established.

Finally, an excerpt from a February 2008 article on an exhibition on Jaffa's history that maybe did, maybe didn't, make a dent in the Municipality's plans for the centennial:

"I've had it up to here with meeting colleagues at conferences in Europe whose only interest is in the Citta Bianca, the White City of Tel Aviv," Bar Or says. "After all, conservation is memory. The cultivation of the Bauhaus heritage has made people forget what is not seen and not preserved. It makes no difference to me that some people claim that to preserve these houses is to anchor the history of the Palestinians. In any case, those people think the orchards of Jaffa and Tel Aviv exist in paintings by Reuven Rubin and Nahum Gutman and in the writings of Brenner, and only there."

Most of the structures were forgotten and neglected, says Bar Or; this is the first time they have been placed in the spotlight with the aim of bringing about a change in their status. "The goal of the exhibition is to put the well houses on the agenda, so the municipality will not roll its eyes and say they do not merit conservation. Just as [Tel Aviv Mayor Ron] Huldai was able to designate 1,200 Bauhaus structures for conservation and persuade UNESCO that they constitute a treasure, he will now discover that there are palaces among these well houses."

Hint of what you can read about further on in the same article:

The Biluim House featured on one of the centennial walks above was the house of one Anton Ayoub, citrus grower who is credited with having "discovered" the first Chamouti orange. One house, two identities.

Read also about Anton Roche's house and the Al-Azi clan's compound.

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I hadn't planned to end with a rant, but since I intend to do a few pieces on this subject, I'll explain that it seems to me that as long as parts of our history are routinely omitted or given scant mention in official Israeli tourist literature, the will to make peace cannot be expected to take root. You can't erase history or flatten it under another without warping minds; if people are educated to see only what an authority says is there in spite of evidence to the contrary, there's a psychological problem that won't just disappear. Both translate into a growing national dumbness and numbness that hunkers down behind the illusory or the partial and postpones any day of reckoning. To the charge that Jewish history is rarely mentioned in the history of other countries I will reply that if Jews had comprised 20% of the inhabitants of those countries I would accept that argument. If I hadn't already seen ample evidence that this next argument produces a fat yawn, I'd add that since Jews know what it feels like to be ignored and excluded maybe we should be more scrupulous in avoiding infiicting it on others.

If the form the Tel Aviv celebrations have taken (in fact a great opportunity to illustrate the tolerance this fascinating city boasts) were the only example of the problem, this exercise would not be worth the effort. But travelling the country expressly to try to go beyond what we are told is there, it's clear to me that some of the work can be done by simply telling. This does not mean uncritically adopting the Palestinian or any other narrative that displays some of the same characteristics as ours in the amnesia/distortions department. It would merely attempt to reveal what is still there if you're only willing to lift what's obscuring it and integrate what you find underneath with what you're holding in your hand.

sh

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We live in the Middle East. We like to talk to our neighbors. We want peace for our region and are determined to persevere in striving for it. We will be happy to discover that we are not the only ones. Thanks for coming by.