An open invitation

Residents of the disadvantaged town of Jisr e-Zarka are hoping to improve their income by harnessing the tourism potential of Ramadan, as many of their neighbors have done.

By ARIEL ZILBER
Jisr e-Zarka 521 (photo credit: Ariel Zilber)
Jisr e-Zarka 521
(photo credit: Ariel Zilber)
The irony was impossible to miss. On the eve of Tisha Be’av, the day that Jews worldwide fast to commemorate the destruction of the Temple, a group of Israeli Jews were getting ready to join their Muslim neighbors in breaking the fast of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month in which followers of the faith are forbidden to eat or drink during daytime hours. As passages of the Koran blared over the loudspeakers and the muezzin called the locals to prayer, more than a dozen septuagenarians who took part in the building of a kibbutz in the Negev enjoyed a feast of kubbe, grilled chicken, rice, humous and other Middle Eastern delicacies.
Jisr e-Zarka was an appropriate setting, for it is a town that most Israelis have passed by as they drive northward along the Tel Aviv-Haifa coastal highway (Route 2) yet know little about. This will change, if Amash Mohammed has his way.
Four years ago, Mohammed noticed that Arab municipalities in Wadi Ara had begun offering tours of the area to Jewish visitors during Ramadan.
Seizing on the potential of a similar venture in his hometown of Jisr, Mohammed decided to take the initiative.
“The idea is based on a tour of Jisr e- Zarka, namely visiting lookout points and historic and archeological sites in the area,” he says. “We also offer a walking tour of the streets and alleyways of Jisr so that the people who come to visit us will hear the real story, the true story of Jisr e-Zarka because, unfortunately, a large portion of the public in the State of Israel doesn’t know the real story of the inhabitants of Jisr e-Zarka.”
Mohammed, who leads the tour in addition to fulfilling his duties as the director of the Jisr e-Zarka local council chief’s office, is hopeful that the walking tours, which take visitors to lookout points, the city center, and the famous fisherman’s village on the shore, will not only dispel long-held myths regarding Israeli Arabs and the Islamic holy month of Ramadan but will also provide an economic boost to one of the most impoverished villages in the country.
Visitors can catch a glimpse of the vestiges of Roman dams and quarries, as well as the Nahal Taninim estuary, where villagers try to catch the few remaining fish in the water. For a panoramic view of the town, one can climb atop the Roman Hill (known as Tel Hataninim in Hebrew).
“With these tours, we are trying to ‘correct,’ so to speak, the disinformation that has accumulated over the years,” he says. “We are doing this during Ramadan so that we can give people a taste of what Ramadan is like, the importance of Ramadan in Islam and how people run their dayto- day affairs during Ramadan. So we combine these two things – a tour of the area so that people could get to know it up close, and informing people about Ramadan and everything that this month entails.”
Visitors who take the tour are treated to a first-hand look at the town’s surroundings and all that hinders its development. The most obvious eyesore is the Tel Aviv-Haifa coastal highway, whose southbound lanes abut a residential area. In some instances, just a few meters separate the makeshift fence on the side of the road with the two- and three-story houses in the village’s southern neighborhood.
“For Jisr e-Zarka, Route 2 has brought us distress,” Mohammed says. “It is a hazard. The village is suffering as a result of the highway on a number of levels. With regard to safety, the highway is dangerous because we don’t have a fence or wall or separating structure that divides the highway from the town. It’s also a hazard because the population in the neighborhood that sits right up against the highway has a very high rate of hearing problems caused by the proximity to the road.”
Despite the proximity of the road to Jisr e-Zarka, there is no interchange that connects the village with the highway. The only access road to the town – which was installed 10 years ago – can be reached through Route 4, a few kilometers farther inland.
This makes it impossible for motorists to make pit stops in the village.
“Today, Route 2 is not usable for Jisr e-Zarka,” he says. “There is no interchange on the highway that leads into the village. Getting to Jisr e- Zarka by using GPS or following road signs is difficult. If we were connected to Route 2, it would have been much easier to bring more people into the village.”
Not only does the highway not enable drivers the option of visiting, but it also physically inhibits its expansion. The construction of Route 2 in the late 1960s was “a historic injustice,” according to Mohammed.
He says that the Interior Ministry is considering relocating Route 2 eastward, which would allow the village to expand and grow. This plan, however, has been met with opposition from nearby Beit Hananya, an agricultural moshav that would be asked to relinquish land to the town.
Having earned a degree in political science from the University of Haifa, Mohammed is keenly aware of the socioeconomic problems that beset the village. Tourists grow alarmed at the staggering figures that attest to a town in distress. Of Jisr e-Zarka’s 13,000 residents, 60 percent are reliant on welfare services.
Unemployment stands at around 30%, while those who do work earn less than minimum wage. Fishing, a key industry that has long been a linchpin of the local economy, has been affected by the scarcity of fish in the Mediterranean.
The town has also suffered from serious mismanagement of its finances. According to Mohammed, Jisr’s local council is NIS 120 million in debt, part (12%) of which is attributed to the low rate of tax collection.
Villagers have also had to endure cuts in the water supply, which is the result of the local council’s failure to pay its debts.
“We have a lot of socioeconomic problems and problems with education,” he says. “There is very high overcrowding here, and thus there are no public lands and grounds to build on. It’s a huge mess, but if people realize that they need to help one another, then Jisr e-Zarka will look entirely different. We are very optimistic that tomorrow will be even better. We don’t want to get to a situation where what the politicians say [about Arabs] is what people will believe.”
THE RESIDENTS of Jisr e-Zarka have been historically looked down upon by other Arabs. Those who settled in Jisr, a village made up predominantly of two large clans – the Jourban and Amash families – came there 500 years ago from as far away as Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Morocco. Last century, with the financing of the Rothschild family, the inhabitants of Jisr emptied the Kabara swamp, which is located between the village and the southern tip of Mount Carmel.
To this day, Jisr remains isolated from the rest of Arab society in Israel.
As a result, villagers normally marry within their own clan, which often results in genetic disorders.
Nonetheless, Mohammed remains optimistic that tourism could be Jisr’s saving grace.
“There is great potential in Jisr e- Zarka,” he says. “Just through tourism alone, the town could take off. Tourism will enable Jisr e-Zarka to improve its own lot. We want our guests to get to know us up close, as we are today. We believe that there are things that we need to improve upon, but with close cooperation we could reach a point where everybody benefits from these tours – the guests, the residents. There are more people willing to host the visitors, and we are hopeful that masses of more people will tour Jisr e-Zarka.”
Mohammed says he has been encouraged by the responses from visitors who have taken the tour. The demand, which has increased thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations, compelled him to double the number of tours offered. Jews from around the country have expressed gratitude for the warm hospitality of the hosts, particularly the end-of-tour Ramadan feast held at the home of a local resident.
“We travel around so much, yet here at home, right under our noses, there are places that we have never seen,” says Irit Cohen, a resident of Kibbutz Magen, who gathered a group of old friends from the Hashomer Hatza’ir youth movement for a tour of the town.
“We’ve driven by this village thousands of times, yet we never entered it. So it’s important to get to know the town, and it may provide an opening for more contacts in the future.”
For more information about a Ramadan tour of Jisr e-Zarka, contact Amash Mohammed at 052-375-0705.