Day 7—October 19
Haifa
We drove to Haifa for the day to visit Yasser and Jumana Mansour, Israeli Arab friends of the McInneses. A friend of Yasser’s, Samir Zahra, who recently returned to Israel after living in the US for over 20 years, also joined us. Yasser is a pediatrician, but had to attend medical school in Italy because Israel admits so few Arab students to its own medical schools. He says only three Arabs were admitted to medical schools in Israel the year he applied. Admission is determined by “psychological”as well as traditional academic tests, the application and outcome of which remain a mystery. According to Yasser, the Israelis likely use the psychological tests as a pretext for excluding Arabs. Samir works as an engineer, and went to college in the US because he was also unable to get into Israeli schools.
Yasser used to have many Israeli as well as Arab patients in his medical practice, but has lost many of them since the intifada began. He says there is a Jewish boycott of Arab businesses, but that relations between Jews and Arabs are quite good in Haifa, particularly compared to other parts of Israel.
Samir showed us his Israeli identity card, which displayed his “nationality” as “Arab”. In Israel, the word “Jewish” denotes much more than a religious affiliation—it defines a nationality, and is recorded as such on the identity cards of Jewish Israelis. All Israelis must carry I.D. cards stating their “nationalities”.
We had refreshments and chatted awhile in the Mansour’s beautiful home on a hillside overlooking the city of Haifa before heading out on a tour of the area. Related photos
Ein Hod, “unrecognized village”
We drove with Yasser and Samir over a long, winding, rutted road to reach the isolated village of Ein Hod, one of the “unrecognized” Arab villages in Israel. Unrecognized villages are denied all government services such as water, electricity, roads, and schools, and are often the targets of land confiscations and home demolitions. Most of the 200 inhabitants of Ein Hod came from families that fled in 1948 from the their original village just a few miles away, also called Ein Hod, and to which they have never been allowed to return. In fact, their old village is now occupied by Jews and has been turned into an “artist's colony”. The new inhabitants didn't change the name, so the artist colony continues to be called “Ein Hod”.
While the unrecognized Ein Hod was mainly settled after the 1948 war, other unrecognized villages were already well established by then. And while Ein Hod has a population of only 200, other unrecognized villages are larger, some with as many as 7000 inhabitants. There are currently estimated to be around 100,000 people living in unrecognized villages in Israel.
We met with some of the village leaders in the unrecognized Ein Hod. The village displayed a level of deterioration and squalor that we did not find in other Israeli communities, Jewish or Arab. The spokesman of the group, Mohammed Abu El-Haija, is the Chairman of The Association of Forty, an organization comprising residents of the various unrecognized villages throughout Israel. The Association works for legal recognition of the villages, and advocates respect for the legal and human rights of the villagers. We were told that for decades after the 1948 war, the villagers were so isolated that they did not even realize there were other such villages within Israel suffering similar fates. In addition, the existence of the villages was virtually unknown to the general Israeli population, whether Jewish or Arab, until fairly recently. Samir confided that even he had not known of Ein Hod’s existence until today.
Mr. El-Haija told us how, after the new state of Israel was created in 1948, the Israeli government devised a “master plan” for the development of the country, and in so doing, decided which villages would be officially recognized and which would not. The reasons for designating some villages "unrecognized" apparently were related to which areas the Israelis considered most desirable for residential areas or national parks, and to Israel’s desire to concentrate its Arab citizens in limited areas of the country. It appears that the government goes to great lengths to discourage Arabs from staying in the unrecognized villages—it has designated much of the land around the villages as “agricultural land”, “military areas”, or “national parks”, on all of which construction is forbidden. Ein Hod has received demolition orders for some of its buildings, but has had none carried out to date, however, there are other unrecognized villages that have experienced demolitions.
When the villagers requested permission to build in Ein Hod, they were told they could not build because they didn’t have a “master plan”. But when they created a master plan for Ein Hod, they were told that they couldn't implement it because Ein Hod is “unrecognized”. They’ve also been told that, since their land has been designated a national park area, they are not allowed to raise goats, because goats are harmful to the "park" trees.
We asked how Ein Hod obtained its water, and Mr. El-Haija said that they purchase it from a nearby Jewish town at rather exorbitant rates. Through the court system, Ein Hod has at least been successful in forcing the government to provide two teachers for its younger children, and buses to Haifa schools for children past the sixth grade.
After leaving the unrecognized village, we drove to the site of the original Ein Hod, now the artist colony, and saw many attractive new buildings built on top of some of the original stone walls and foundations. The colony has become quite a tourist attraction, with shops that sell the colony’s artwork. Related photos
We drove back to Haifa for lunch at an Arab-owned restaurant that caters to a mixed Arab and Jewish clientele. On the way we passed more boarded-up, abandoned “present absentee” houses in Haifa. The present absentees are not allowed to return and claim them, and since nobody is maintaining them, they eventually will crumble, after which the government can condemn them, destroy them, and claim the land for other purposes.
Yasser and Samir told us about the many signs that have popped up around Haifa and elsewhere in Israel that declare "Transfer is the solution" and "Transfer equals peace". Related photos
After lunch, we drove a short ways up the coast to Akko,
the Crusader city known as "Acre", which was the center of the Crusader Empire in the
Holy Land. The city is still surrounded
on three sides by massive defensive stone walls, and is open only on the
seaward side. Samir said the walls have
held up to erosion extremely well because they are made of sandstone. Akko was so well fortified that it enabled
the Crusaders to maintain a foothold in the Holy Land long after they’d been
defeated elsewhere. Yasser and Samir
told us that the fortifications were still
strong enough, many centuries after their construction, to thwart Napoleon’s attempted
conquest of the city. Many people still live in Crusader-era
houses, and there are strict controls on external improvements or other modifications
that would change the character of the buildings. The city is a major tourist attraction, and it was crowded with
sightseers while we were there. Related
photos