20 evacuated Acre Arab families set to return after Succot

Municipality is temporarily housing them in hotel rooms.

By DAN IZENBERG
Acre wrecked car 224.88 (photo credit: Yaakov Lappin)
Acre wrecked car 224.88
(photo credit: Yaakov Lappin)
In all the desolation and ugliness of the public housing project in Acre's Burla neighborhood, there is only one remnant of the Arab village of Manshiye, which was located on the site until its destruction in the 1948 War of Independence. Memories of that expulsion 60 years earlier were very much on the minds of the roughly 20 Arab families who live in the project and the nearby houses of the "eastern neighborhood" and were forced to flee from their homes during three nights of rioting by Jews after Yom Kippur. The riots were triggered by an Arab resident of Acre, Jamal Taufik, who drove into the housing project with his son and a friend late Yom Kippur evening to pick up his daughter, infuriating many Jewish residents. Rumors that Jewish rioters had killed one of his passengers triggered riots by a mob of Arabs from the Old City who smashed car and store windows along Ben-Ami Street, the commercial hub, on their way to the housing project on the outskirts of town. For the next three nights, Jewish mobs wreaked revenge. The mosque in the project is a small rectangular structure built of stone and capped with a small, white dome. It is not in use and is surrounded by a metal fence. Towering above it on either side are four- and seven-story apartment buildings made of bare, prefabricated slabs covered with beige gravel, of the type that were built for new immigrants and the poor in the early 1960s. The mosque stands at one end of what is meant to be a park or open space bisecting the project, what town planners like to call a "green lung." But there is nothing green about it. The ground is brown and bare and flanked by a few trees, some of them as drab as the ground itself. This is the unlikely scene of a drama that riveted national attention for several days, when the fragile veneer of Jewish-Arab co-existence in Acre fell apart and bands made up of the have-nots of the city, Jews and Arabs, turned violent. Seven of the 20 Arab families live in the housing project and rent their homes from Amidar. The rest live south of the project, in one- or two-story houses originally built to house Jewish immigrants in the 1950s. They own their own homes. Over the course of three nights of rioting that followed Yom Kippur, police evacuated all the Arab families living in the eastern neighborhood. For several days after being forced out, the families were left to their own devices. They either stayed with relatives or lived on the street. It was only on Sunday that the municipality rented them hotel rooms, where they are still lodged. Many if not all of the families hadn't had time to take anything with them when they fled, and those who tried to return afterwards were driven away by Jewish gangs. It took until Thursday, an entire week, for city officials to explain to the Arab families what would be done with them. According to attorney Madiha Ramal Aisha, who grew up in the project and whose mother is among those who fled, the families were informed on Thursday that they will be allowed to return home next Tuesday, at the end of Succot. Most private owners intend to do so, although Aisha said two of the families wanted to trade their homes for an Amidar apartment elsewhere in the city. But who will pay for the damage and renovation of the other houses, particularly the three that were burned down? The residents were told they might receive funding from the state under the law that grants compensation to victims of hostile actions. Otherwise, they may have to sue the city and those who attacked their homes for damages. Those who live in Amidar housing will also be allowed to move to apartments of similar size owned by the housing company elsewhere in the city. If they can't find such housing right away, they will be allowed to rent two-room apartments for the time being. If they choose to return to the housing project, they will be allowed to do so. Aisha said most of the Amidar families do not want to return to the neighborhood after the latest incidents. Unless she has changed her mind in the last few days, Amad Sha'aban is not one of them. Sha'aban lives in the apartment where Taufik, the Arab driver, was heading on the night of Yom Kippur. Her apartment was the first to be evacuated. On Monday, she and dozens of other homeless and angry Arabs gathered in front of city hall, demanding to know what was going to happen to them. "We left the apartment without anything," she told The Jerusalem Post. "We don't even have clothes. We were wearing pajamas. We were besieged for four hours and the police couldn't even come to extricate us. We left the house without identity cards. We have nothing, nothing at all. "They think they will do to us again what they did in 1948. But they're just dreaming. No one will get me out of my home. No one will get me off my land. [It is] my land." "An Arab desecrated Yom Kippur," said Berta Ahmed, whose home was burned down for the third time since she moved to the neighborhood. "And a Jew burned my house down on Shabbat." Berta was still wearing the white sweatshirt she had on when she was forced to flee. It was stained with carbon. "The entire household was burned," she said. "They think they will burn us out, too, but they won't get us out of here." Observing the anger and helplessness of the Arab residents with great pain was Maha Khouri Hazan, an attorney who was born, raised and still lives in Acre's Old City. She was part of a delegation from the Israel Bar Association that was due to meet Mayor Shimon Lancry to discuss the situation. She arrived early to express solidarity with those driven out of their homes. "Avigdor Lieberman [head of Israel Beiteinu] came to Acre to see with his own eyes the result of the transfer that he keeps calling for, the transfer of the Arabs," she told the Post. "And that's exactly what this is. A small example of his policy." Hazan said the police should have protected the Arabs instead of bending to the rioters. "We demand that the Arab families return to their homes and that the police protect them," she said. "We must not legitimize violence and extremists and allow them to take control. We must impose law and order." Hazan said the violence on both sides came from the poor and socially deprived segments of the population and that the government was responsible for neglecting them ever since the state was created. She said she still believed in coexistence but that to achieve this, "it is the honest and fair-minded people on both sides who must be in control, and not the extremists."