Love thy neighbor?

More young Arabs are moving to Tel Aviv, but it is not always plain sailing for them in the White City,

By ARIEL ZILBER
Areen Shahbari (photo credit: Courtesy)
Areen Shahbari
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Trendsetting seems to come somewhat naturally to Areen Shahbari.
Ever since she was a wide-eyed teenager on the verge of completing her studies at the prestigious St. Joseph Seminary and High School, Shahbari knew that she would eventually snag her dream job – being in front of a camera on Channel 2, the country’s most popular commercial television station, even though the network did not employ any Arabs at the time.
Shahbari and her secular Muslim family in their hometown of Nazareth were well aware that achieving that dream entailed relocating to Tel Aviv, a move considered, at that time, uncommon among Palestinian Israeli youths plotting their career paths.
“Most students [in the North] either went to the Technion [in Haifa] or [Hebrew University in] Jerusalem,” says Shahbari, 28. “You either went to study engineering at the Technion or medicine, or something related to medicine, like pharmacology at the Hebrew University. To say that you were going to Tel Aviv was really rare, particularly if you were from Nazareth.
Saying that I wanted to go to Tel Aviv was a surprise for everyone. I was the first one from my family to go to Tel Aviv.
“In Nazareth, everyone [in your family] gets involved in your decision, so they start saying, ‘Why Tel Aviv?’” she says. “I wanted to study communications, and I wanted to work for Channel 2. That was something that I’ve wanted since I was 18. I knew that if I wanted to find a good job, I had to be in Tel Aviv.”
Shahbari’s initial step was to pursue a degree in psychology and communications at Tel Aviv University, where she was eager to acclimate herself to her new surroundings. But her experiences on the sprawling, 170-acre campus that sits in the heart of north Tel Aviv’s tony Ramat Aviv quarter left much to be desired.
“I thought it was going to be an exciting experience, and that I was going to meet new friends from different backgrounds,” she says. “And I was going to have lots of fun. I didn’t think it was going to be that hard.
“It was the worst experience, especially in the beginning,” she recalls.
Ironically, it was the heavily Jewish backdrop that only Tel Aviv could provide which brought Shahbari’s national identity – an issue that was devoid of the usually charged, political overtones in her childhood – into clearer focus.
“I knew a little bit about my history,” she says. “We didn’t study [Palestinian] history at school. I knew there are Jews in this country. Nazareth is the largest Palestinian city in Israel, and I didn’t have much interaction with Israelis before [coming to Tel Aviv]. I knew that I was Palestinian, but I never identified myself as Palestinian because I didn’t need to. My interaction was always with Palestinians, so in terms of identity I didn’t need to explain who I was.”
“My expectation was I would go to Tel Aviv and I would have friends, but I felt like a foreigner, a stranger,” she says. “I was lonely and depressed for the first six months. I failed most of my exams in the first semester. So I struggled in the classes, I felt I didn’t belong, I couldn’t follow up. It was pretty hard. It wasn’t an inviting atmosphere where people wanted to know who I was. When I was speaking Arabic, people would look at me strange on buses and in classrooms. It really made me keep quiet and avoid talking, which was the total opposite of me.”
“It was a terrible feeling, to feel that you are living in your own country but you feel you don’t belong to where you live,” Shahbari says. “If you speak in Arabic, people start looking at you in a way where you don’t feel comfortable with yourself so you don’t speak. If they discuss political issues, and they usually talk about Palestinians in a bad way, you feel more and more uncomfortable.
It’s not like anyone did anything bad to me, but I wasn’t speaking.
The whole atmosphere was about Israeli Jews.”
Shahbari was close to despair, but during her third year of studies she managed to get her foot in the door of the largest, most successful television production company in the country – Keshet, the top franchisee whose programs air on Channel 2.
Shahbari joined the multicultural department before eventually working her way up toward hosting a talk show devoted to women’s issues. Once again, she had revealed herself to be a pioneer of sorts.
“I was the first and only Palestinian in the entire company,” she says. “It was hard, especially in the first two years. There were only a few people I could talk to, and because of the political situation there is lots of segregation.”
Despite a successful run as host of an Arab-language daytime talk show that airs weekly on Channel 2, Shahbari knew her days at Keshet were numbered, since the glass ceiling for Arabs was such that department heads were reluctant to promote her at the expense of her Jewish colleagues.
Her academic and professional experience taught her that no matter how hard she tried to break into the Jewish Israeli mainstream, she was still on the receiving end of a collective cold shoulder from a group of people who seem more comfortable with homogeneity.
“It’s not like we don’t want to know the other side, but from the Israeli side it’s mostly ignoring the other side,” Shahbari says. “There’s lots of ignorance, and it’s not like you feel people want to know anything about you. It’s not like they want to know anything about you.”
Shahbari says she felt resentful of the constant need to debunk fiercely held stereotypes among the locals in Tel Aviv. When she entered a taxi cab, the driver would immediately take note of her accented Hebrew, thus setting off the customary inquiry.
“I had to explain who I am every single day,” she says. “I had to explain where I come from, what my religion is, how come I’m beautiful and I’m an Arab, and why do I dress a certain way, all these questions that I faced every single day. It was draining. It wasn’t like people were interested in knowing [about me]. It was more suspicion than being interested. Or someone would think that I’m an Israeli Jew and they would hear me speak English and ask me, ‘How come? How come you live here? How come you’re a Muslim and you’re like that?’” “People would say things like, ‘I thought you are all terrorists,’” she says. “You have to explain why you’re a human being. As if you are an exception.
There’s lots of ignorance that is very tiring and draining, and I’m tired of proving something to someone who doesn’t really care for me in the end.”
THE CLASH of cultures and the ethnic and political barriers are likely to become more acute if current migration trends within Israel persist. Since the beginning of the past decade, more Israeli Arabs have relocated to Jewish towns in the center of the country in search of education and career opportunities.
Prof. Aziz Haidar, a sociology researcher at the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute for Peace and the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, is one of a number of scholars who have taken the latest census figures and analyzed the shifting population patterns that are altering the ethnic and communal landscape.
According to Haidar, a confluence of factors, including privatization, globalization, economic openness and liberalism, and the expansion of higher education among Arab youths, has fueled a mass movement of middle-class Arabs into Jewish-dominated municipalities that offer more opportunities for young families.
“We found that in the beginning of the past decade, there were some 40,000 Arabs who had moved into Jewish towns,” Haidar says. “Today we are talking about 60,000. These are mainly young families in search of higher income and quality of life.”
While Shahbari’s experience highlights the challenges facing any would be transplant, Haidar thinks that the benefits far outweigh the pitfalls that are in any case not serious enough to deter Arab families from seeking greener pastures.
“Some of the quality of life that [Israeli Arabs] are looking for is anonymity, and in the Jewish towns they can have this and enjoy the infrastructure that exists there and enjoy the developed life in town and at the same time live anonymously, especially when we are talking about cities without communal formations,” he says. “They are spread out in different neighborhoods in the cities, so the hostility from the Jewish side is not felt because they haven’t consolidated into a community [that would make them a target].”
While mixed towns like Haifa, Jerusalem and Upper Nazareth have long been desired destinations for careerist Arabs, there is a growing willingness among Arabs to take up residence in traditionally all-Jewish areas such as Karmiel, Beersheba, Afula and Hadera. The most intriguing case study, however, remains Tel Aviv.
AYMAN IS a 23-year-old waiter at a trendy café in north Tel Aviv, not far from Tel Aviv University, where he is pursuing a degree in nursing. He moved to the center three years ago from his home village of Arrabe in the Lower Galilee, and his experiences have been for the most part positive.
“There’s a huge difference between the local culture where I come from and Tel Aviv,” he says. “It’s more expensive here, but thanks to this job I can get used to the situation. All in all, I’m having a good time here in Tel Aviv. It’s easy to find work here, and the population is different from all aspects compared to that of the North.”
Ayman says he has been treated well by neighbors, and that he has had an easier time fitting into his new surroundings thanks to the increasing affluence of Israel’s Arab community.
“There’s more freedom here than in the North,” he says, “but there is a similarity as well because of the speed with which our culture has also developed.
The differences [between the Jewish and Arab sectors] are not as great as they once were.”
Haidar’s research and Shahbari’s testimony appears to support this statement.
Unlike in years past, when Israeli Arabs tended to primarily opt for professions in medicine and nursing, the explosion of hi-tech start-ups and business innovations as well as the proliferation of colleges and research institutes have opened up new avenues for graduates who seek employment and opportunity wherever they may lie.
“We are talking about a relatively new process,” Haidar says. “Nobody expects [Israeli Arabs] to return and contribute to improving the state of Arab towns. Their lives are dedicated to formation of families and to careers.”
A sociologist by trade, Haidar, who has focused his work on studying the Israeli economy with a special emphasis on the rise of the Arab middle class, says that a quarter of Arab households meet the criteria for being considered part of the middle class. These educated Arabs are increasingly preferring Jewish towns over mixed towns such as Acre, Haifa and Jaffa.
“I plan on staying in Tel Aviv after I complete my studies because it’s easier to find a job here than it is in the North,” says Ayman, who is already making plans to earn a master’s degree.
“I always tell my friends who ended up going to the University of Haifa or other colleges in the North that here in Tel Aviv people are willing to accept you and give you a job. Some of my friends were even convinced to come here. You have to understand that studying and working in Tel Aviv is not like going abroad.”
DESPITE THE personal hardships and unmet expectations, Shahbari, who now lives in Nazareth, takes away positive experiences from her time in Tel Aviv, though she believes that Arabs should take the skills learned here and apply them to developing their home towns.
“Tel Aviv is the most progressed, developed place in the country,” she says. “I would recommend Tel Aviv, and it’s one of the reasons I went to study there. I knew that this was the best place to get more mature, to find a good job, to progress. In terms of the country and the city itself and job opportunities, I do want people to go to Tel Aviv and have the experience of living in Tel Aviv to get the skills that are needed. It depends on each one, but they should come back to their villages and towns to try and help out.”
“I can say with certainty that when compared to Haifa, Safed and Jerusalem, I feel that Tel Aviv is a city in the truest sense of the word,” Ayman says. “It’s a city of coexistence. I rarely feel instances of racism from other people, and I hope it stays that way.”
Despite Ayman’s optimism, the Jews of Tel Aviv, particularly those who own apartments, may not be as eager to accept Arabs as some may hope.
According to N., a real-estate agent for a firm in central Tel Aviv, there is a clear trend among Jews selling and renting apartments to avoid doing business with Arabs.
“Just a few days ago, [an Arab] lawyer from the North came to see me asking to buy an apartment,” says N., who spoke to Metro on condition of anonymity. “He was a really educated, nice guy, very likeable. I showed him an apartment, and he said that he was willing to pay any price, but the owner didn’t want to sell to him. Instead, the apartment was rented out to somebody else.”
“It really hurt me to see this,” N.
says. “I noticed that some real-estate agents just refuse to deal with Arabs. If you’re an Arab looking to move into an apartment in Tel Aviv, you have almost no chance. It is very hard to find an apartment because owners will not agree to do business with them.”
“The trend among real-estate agents is without a doubt to deny Arabs the opportunity to buy and rent apartments in Tel Aviv,” he says. “The real estate agents will deny this, but I’ve seen it firsthand. If there are 20 Arabs who are willing to buy compared to just five Jews, the apartment owners will tell the Arabs to hit the road, even if they have money.”
N. says that in his prior job, he was specifically told not to take on Arab clients.
“We are at the mercy of the apartment owners,” he says. “When you arrange a deal to buy or rent, the owner eventually sees the name of the prospective buyer or renter. Even if the Arab was a Druse or a Beduin who served in the IDF, it still wouldn’t help.”
N. says he was surprised at the extent to which Jewish property owners are willing to eschew doing business with Arabs.
“It really is sad, but, then again, if I tried to get an apartment in Rahat or in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem, I probably wouldn’t have an easy time either,” he says.
AS FOR Shahbari, she is enjoying the benefits that Nazareth, which boasts its own booming economy, has to offer.
“[Tel Aviv] is a very tiring city,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to build a family in Tel Aviv. It’s very good when you are young and you want to build yourself, but the North is very calm. You could still work hard and create a whole economy in the North.”