Israel recently (May 14) celebrated the 75th anniversary of its nationhood; while conversely, that date marks in Palestinian circles the Nakba–an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” or “disaster”–denoting the event which forced the displacement of almost a million Arab Palestinians from their rightful homeland.
Perhaps nowhere is the decimation of Arab culture, self-determination, and wealth more apparent than in the neighborhoods of Haifa, where the sale of individual homes previously owned by Arabs in the city–which were confiscated by Zionist militias under the Israeli Absentees’ Property Law–have yielded obscene (multi-million dollar) profits for their new “proprietors.”
One such particular collection of properties–comprised of a total of 11 historic buildings–was sold ten years ago for one million US dollars. Today, the asking price is 20 million US dollars.
Since 2000, the Israeli government has been selling the remaining Palestinian edifices to real estate firms, which either demolish them and rebuild, or renovate them, either way yielding top-bracket luxury real estate designed to secure the aspirations of the obscenely wealthy.
Orwa Sweitat, a Haifa-based urban planner and activist who works tirelessly to inhibit further demolitions, reports: “They are transforming the ruins of the Nabka into economic jewels for the benefit of the Israeli market,” explaining that the “process of gentrification aims to attract middle-and-upper-class Jews and push out Palestinian Arabs.”
“Both Israeli laws and city planning worked together to seize the property and lands of Palestinian refugees” and to “erase, destroy, deform and privatize the Arab-Palestinian identity and characteristics of Haifa,” indicated Sweitat.
As Al-Jazeera reported earlier this month, these transgressions have not occurred exclusively in Haifa; but rather, all over Israel. All Palestinian properties whose owners became refugees, including those who were internally displaced, were taken over by the state. But, as only 20% of Haifa’s original homes remain, the transformation of the city’s original architectural character–thanks to the bulldozers–has proven especially profound.
Haifa, the global center of Baha’i faith, is often portrayed by Israeli and Western media as a hip, modern, cosmopolitan city, and as a model of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.
Yet, while Tel Aviv tend to escape some of the most overt anti-Arab sentiment from which Jerusalem suffers, at least on the surface, anyway–no doubt evidenced by last Thursday’s exercise in ultra-nationalist vulgarity disguised as a “Flag March” in the capital–history has shown that the institutional discrimination which lies just underneath that surface can be just as devastating.