A long way from home

The upcoming sale of the veteran absorption center in Mevaseret Zion marks the end of an era, and poses difficulties for its last residents.

By NAAMA BARAK
The veteran absorption center in Mevaseret Zion (photo credit: NAAMA BARAK)
The veteran absorption center in Mevaseret Zion
(photo credit: NAAMA BARAK)
Galagey Taphara faces an uncertain future.
He came to Israel from Ethiopia with his family 10 years ago, and the place that was his home for the past seven years, the Mevaseret Zion absorption center, has now been put up for sale.
Taphara and his fellow 1,300 residents at the absorption center say they found out from the press that the land on which their homes stand was offered for sale at the end of April, and that they may be evicted from them on December 31, 2014.
The upcoming sale of the land to private property developers means it is unlikely that the lucrative land will continue to serve as an absorption center, and will probably be turned into a prosperous neighborhood.
Anyone passing along Mevaseret Zion’s main road easily notices the absorption center. Situated in one of the country’s most affluent towns, the modest center certainly stands out, and its immigrant population clearly faces issues quite unknown to its wealthier neighbors.
The center was founded by the Jewish Agency with the help of benefactors Edward and Mabel Byer in the 1970s and has since served immigrants from across the globe, providing them with a home and social services in their first few months in the country. While prior to the wave of Ethiopian immigration in the 1990s the center served as a quick adaptation spot, it has since become the longtime home for many Ethiopian immigrants who have found it difficult to integrate into Israeli society.
After its foundation, the land that the center stands upon was bought by the Jewish Agency’s Pension Fund, a subsidiary of the agency, which now wishes to sell it to private investors. As a result, the question arises as to the fate of the families living there, who are in part new to the country and who are all at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder – meaning they would not be able to purchase alternative homes for themselves.
The residents of the center would be happy to leave should a suitable housing solution be found for them, said Taphara, mentioning how crowded and unhappy life there is. In his opinion, a satisfactory solution would involve receiving a grant from the government to enable the immigrants to take out a mortgage on a home of their own.
Taphara is upset that he had to find out about the fate of the absorption center from the media, and wonders why the Jewish Agency hasn’t yet spoken to residents about the matter. He turns his hope to the Immigration and Absorption Ministry, from which he expects to find himself and the rest of his community a just solution before the center closes.
“This is not our home, we don’t want to live here our entire lives,” said Taphara. The center residents, however, will not leave unless an alternative housing program is found for them. “Where will we go? We don’t know anything here.”
ATTORNEY HAGAI Adoram, representing the absorption center’s residents, said that private investors, who unlike the state are not bound by public considerations, would be under no obligation to provide the Ethiopian residents with alternative housing.
“Such a case could lead to a situation where the new immigrants could stay on the streets,” he said, adding he would take all the legal steps possible to ensure the rights of the immigrants living in the center.
Adoram said the center’s residents are not looking to improve their standard of living or even receive compensation for leaving their homes, but just wish to be treated fairly and be granted a respectable housing solution when the center is sold.
The residents are Israeli citizens who “were sent to live there by the decision of the Israeli government,” stressed Adoram, who is adamant that the same government should now take care of them.
The announcement that the land was up for sale was made on April 29, and the last date to propose a buying price was May 29. In Adoram’s opinion, the tight schedule indicates that the parties involved want to sell the land as quickly as possible, before any questions are asked or eyebrows raised.
The Jewish Agency strongly rejects such claims.
Agency spokeswoman Hagit Halali said Adoram’s assertion about the schedule of events is “unfounded,” and added that changes to the absorption center are not likely to take place in the upcoming months.
“Should changes to the current activity of the absorption center be made in the future, they will be done with the utmost sensitivity, taking care of and guarding the immigrants’ needs and rights,” she said.
Refuting the accusation that the Jewish Agency itself is evicting immigrants, Halali said that the Pension Fund’s managing company is equally owned by the Jewish Agency and its workers’ committee. As shareholders in the company, the Jewish Agency must respect its directorate’s decision to sell the land, she said.
“Yet the Jewish Agency is vigorously working with the relevant parties to protect the immigrants’ rights and to grant each entitled immigrant continued residence in an absorption center, should it be required,” said Halali.
Efforts to manage the situation and try to take care of the immigrants while the land changes ownership are not enough, said Adoram. In his opinion, “it is the duty of the Jewish Agency to stop and freeze the sales process until an appropriate solution is found for the immigrants.”
A HEATED Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee last Monday highlighted the controversy surrounding the upcoming move, with legislators from across the political spectrum expressing their concern on the matter.
Committee chairman Yoel Razbozov (Yesh Atid) said, “We ask the state comptroller to check how this happened,” adding that “the immigrants who arrived here are not furniture that can be moved from place to place.”
“This trick has no precedent in a country that stands for immigration,” Pnina Tamnu-Shata (Yesh Atid) said of the sale of the absorption center. “I don’t want to believe that someone here is trying to make a buck on the backs of the immigrants.”
Mordechai Yogev (Bayit Yehudi) also strongly objected to the upcoming sale and said that the incident is borderline criminal.
“If the absorption center closes, we need to be sure that none of the immigrants leave without somewhere to go,” he added. Jeremy Saltan, Mevaseret Zion Immigration and Absorption Committee member, said, “The land was donated by American Jews to the Jewish Agency, not for a real-estate project. Now the land has switched hands to their pension fund, they are looking for a minimum of NIS 295 million for the property.
“Something doesn’t smell right, it is possible we are talking about ‘Holyland: The Sequel,’” he added.
In response to these accusations, Jewish Agency directorgeneral Josh Schwartz said in the meeting, “The good of the immigrants is a priority for us and we will make sure that every immigrant who has the right to live in the absorption center gets alternative housing.” AS THE business rolls along, those most affected by it continue to fret about their future. Taphara said the community is worried about a possible move, citing language difficulties and cultural differences as obstacles to becoming independent from the government.
Elderly and lonely people, for example, cannot be expected to work and save up money for a flat, said Taphara, adding, “Moving from absorption center to absorption center is not a solution.”
The way he sees it, a one-off government grant to help purchase a home would solve this problem.
The issues surrounding the upcoming end of the absorption center raise questions about its function in today’s society. Arieh O’Sullivan, who made aliya in the early 1970s with his family as a child and lived in the Mevaseret Zion absorption center for nine months, thinks such centers nowadays serve as “a remainder of socialist days.”
His immigration days were very different to the ones faced by Ethiopian citizens. While he lived in the absorption center for only a very short time, extended by three months because of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Ethiopian immigrants stay at centers for years without much hope of moving on.
When O’Sullivan lived in the absorption center, Mevaseret Zion was “in the middle of nowhere,” and the center was completely self-sufficient, home to an ulpan, a small school, health services and a community club. Everything was provided for, and while no one worked for six months, they all prepared themselves for the imminent move to “real life.”
The absorption center’s residents, and among them O’Sullivan’s family, used to move en masse after six months to newly built apartments subsidized by the government in the Jerusalem neighborhood of East Talpiot. While also remote at the time, immigrants were at least able to move into their own homes.
(COURTESY: Naama Barak)
O’Sullivan thinks that the current residents of the absorption center should move out across the country rather than keeping to different neighborhoods, so that they too can better integrate with the rest of society.
The waves of immigration in the 1970s were much more global, with people coming to Israel from all around the world, most of them with more resources than today’s Ethiopian immigrants.
It would therefore appear that the new immigrants would need more government help than those in the past to manage to create a life for themselves outside of the absorption centers.
The controversy around the sale of the absorption center in Mevaseret Zion seems to reach beyond the individual futures of its residents, which are gloomily uncertain. The fate of the last large wave of immigrants is serving as a test case to changes in Israeli society, and to the role the state appoints to itself regarding the welfare of its weakest people.
As O’Sullivan put it, the absorption centers embody an “oldfashioned idea, optimistic and Zionist,” one that Israel needs to decide whether to cherish and maintain.