Conflict Power and Change

Fadi Shbeita
Acts Studies- Novisad University
May 2007

Introduction
This essay will deal with the conflict between state-authorities and the local Arab population
of Jaffa, revolving around land and housing issues. It comes to describe the background and
deeper roots of the conflict, and also to show the local population's strength and ability to
organize in the face of the vast powers the authorities have. This essay will also describe the
struggle's long term and substantial demands. Even as these lines are being written the
struggle goes on and grows. We therefore cannot present the results of the struggle, nor
estimate its success or failure - this can only be done in the future.
I shall focus in this essay on the description of the background and reasons for the conflict,
and also on the methods of action that have been taken. I shall also refer to the relevant
achievements, the dilemmas and difficulties from the viewpoint of one who is part of what is
happening, while trying to look at everything from above; one who is a partner in the shaping
of this struggle's strategy, while constantly acting, planning and managing it. I shall try to
capture the meeting point between theoretical concepts and the place where they materialize.

Background and conflict roots

During the last year, hundreds of demolition and eviction court orders were sent to families
in A’jami neighborhood (the main Palestinian neighborhood in Jaffa today), by the Israeli
Land Administration (ILA)1. A’jami is the only settled Arab quarter which has remained
since 1948. The families who have received the orders are mostly from underprivileged
sectors of society (A’jami is the 2nd poorest of the 60 neighborhoods in Tel Aviv). As with
many complex and unclear aspects of this region, it can be difficult to fully grasp the
significance of this wave of demolition and evictions. But one only needs to attempt to
understand the present in view of the past and the way this country and its institutions were
built in order to begin to see the political and social impacts of such a process.
Before 1948, Jaffa was an important commercial and cultural center for the Palestinian
people, with a population totalizing close to 70,000 residents2. After the war, there remained
3,650. For the following three years (till 1951), the remaining Palestinian population (from
Jaffa and from surrounding villages) was concentrated in A’jami and put under martial law3.
In 1950, the Absentee Property Law was voted. It provided for confiscation of the property
and land left behind by deported Palestinians – the so-called ‘absentees’. Palestinians who
never left Israel, i.e. who took refuge in a nearby village, also had their property confiscated
and became what was later known as “internal refugees” 4. 95% of the population in A’jami
became what is today called ‘present absentees’ – a person present in Israel at the time but
considered absent and whose land was thus confiscated. These lands were turned over to the
ILA, who permitted the residents of A’jami to remain in the houses in which they were
settled, but merely as ‘protected residents’ and not as owners. As a result, the Arabs of Jaffa

1
See http://www.mmi.gov.il/Envelope/indexeng.asp?page=/static/eng/f_general.html
2
Displaced Palestinians who stayed within the Israeli borders.
3
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_2_28/ai_n16726432/pg_3
4 http://www.palestineremembered.com/Jaffa/Jaffa/index.html#Occupation%20&%20Ethnic%20Cleansing
were deprived of ownership and saw control over land and property and its development pass
into the hands of the newly created Jewish state. This state of affairs remains to this day
(Gershon Shafir, 1993).
During the ‘70s and ‘80s, the ILA and the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality instated a new
housing and planning policy in Jaffa. First and foremost, the city froze any possibility of
building and developing existing houses and thus permits were not provided for renovations
or extensions. Second, the municipality neglected the existing infrastructures in Jaffa – roads,
public buildings and houses were left to ruins. Many houses and buildings were declared not
secure for habitation and their residents evacuated, while the buildings themselves were
sealed with concrete or destroyed. Of the approximately 3250 buildings destroyed in the ‘70s
and ‘80s in A’jami itself, many were family houses, but also landmarks that represented
Palestinian history and culture.
Today, the municipality and ILA policy has been changed: the lands of A’jami and Jabaliyeh
are being sold on the free market. The new policy seems not as aggressive as the old one, but
it leads to the same results – residents are being ‘recommended’ to evacuate in return of
compensation, while others have received court orders for the demolition of the expansions
there were forced to build in the ’70s and ‘80s. We have even heard of situations in which the
ILA has sold property even before evacuating its ‘protected residents’, leaving the buyer to
deal with the pleasant task of clearing them out.

The hundreds of demolition and eviction notices received by residents recently can be
explained on two different levels:
1. The national conflict level: Following the occupation of Jaffa, the local municipality
was abolished and came under the jurisdiction of Tel-Aviv (which was before 48 a
small settlement next to the metropolis of Jaffa). Today, the municipality is known as
“Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality”. The new Israeli regime started a declared process of
changing the city's character from Arab to Hebrew-Israeli (Monterescu. D, 2007). To
achieve this goal, authorities have used different methods from those times until the
present day; at first 95% of the Palestinian residents of Jaffa where expelled. Then
came the mass housing of Jewish immigrants from the Balkans and Arab countries in
Jaffa, and then the policy of under-development, which was a part of the "evacuate
and build" program (which de-facto means that the old is evacuated and demolished,
while new buildings are built, and the population is replaced). The method now is an
attempt to push the weakened Palestinian population out using a "free market" policy
of selling the very lands the State has forcibly seized control over in the past.
2. The brutal Capitalist process of gentrification level: Aside from its plans for the "Jew-
ification"5 of the city, the Tel-Aviv municipality has for the past few years also
adopted a policy of encouraging gentrification in several neighborhoods. For this, the
municipality invests greatly in infrastructure, and in marketing the city as an
attractive real-estate zone – a policy which has lead to a speedy rise in real-estate
prices, and to a massive invasion of foreign investors against whose economic
abilities the local population has no chance of competing.
It is my understanding that the demolition and eviction notices, which were sent at a time of
rise in real-estate prices and an invasion of foreign investors, can be explained by the
authorities' will to "clear and prepare the ground". The heart of the problem lies in the fact
that the authorities are the "legal" owners of the land and property they have taken over in
1948, and in the fact that the Palestinian population is only considered a guest, using the
State's property.
5
An expression used by the government and officials for describing plans aiming to change the demographic
balance by encouraging Jewish populations to move into areas settled by Arabs.
Who are the players involved, and what are the determining powers?
There are different players involved in this conflict. Some are mighty organizations, some
private individuals, and others are local groups. We will try to survey the different players
according to their involvement in the conflict, the resources and the power they have, their
vulnerabilities and interests.
A) Official authorities.
The Israeli Land Administration – is the official administrator of about 93.5% of the land
in Israel (Yiftahel, O. 2000). A great part of the land and property it controls today has
been expropriated, and once belonged to Palestinian refugees now living either outside
Israeli borders, or inside them as Israeli citizens who are considered "internal refugees".
The ILA is co-run by the State of Israel and by Diaspora Jews, and it strives to "represent
the interests of the Jewish people" throughout the world. On the one hand – the
administration is accountable to the state, which defines itself as democratic and
committed to civilian values such as civil equality, rehabilitation, welfare etc. On the
other hand, it is also accountable, by its very definition, to the will of the Jewish people,
wherever they may be, and to the Zionist concept of Israel as the home of the Jewish
people, self defined as a "Jewish and democratic" state.
The main reason leading up to the current conflict is the ILA's decision to behave like a
proper economic firm, striving to maximize profits on land and property which is not
originally its own, though the law states that it is.
Yet the ILA stands at great risk of loss if a local force was to rise and resist the real-estate
deals, intensify the conflict and drive potential foreign investors away. Such a force
might make investors feel the market is unstable and thus that their investment would be
unsafe.
The main strengths of the ILA are its legal holding of the land, and its ability to destine
and maneuver the use of it. ILA is a mighty organization, with great resources.
Amidar – A company which runs ILA property and is responsible to it. It has limited
ability to try and reach deals with the affected residents on a personal basis, yet may not
change the policy as a whole.
The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality – is supposed to represent the interests of its citizens, yet
in our case, as in many others, actually represents the interests of capitalists while
shaking off responsibility to the harm it itself has deliberately brought upon the local
Palestinian residents of Jaffa. This harm was brought upon them by the municipality's
implementation of urban design policies of Jew-ification, turning the Palestinian city into
a Hebrew one, destroying the old, building new houses and replacing the population.
(Monterescu. D, 2007). The Tel Aviv municipality is a rich and resourceful one. It has
the power to negotiate with the ILA and offer alternatives with and for the good of the
residents. It is fairly sensitive to claims of discrimination and racism towards Arabs. It
has so far been the policy of the municipality to shake off responsibility and present itself
as a non-party in the conflict.
The Ministry of Housing – A governmental ministry, meant for the designing, problem-
solving and overseeing of housing issues. So far the ministry presents itself as a non-
party in the conflict. The ministry has the ability to promote an alternative plan amongst
all other parties, and has the governmental budget to do so.
The Courts – need to be obligated to law and justice. The legal struggle in this case is
fairly limited as the law itself is unjust. Theoretically, the court has the possibility to
defend citizens from powerful authorities, yet in this case the affected residents' ability to
use this possibility is quite low. Sensitive national issues are treated by the Israeli courts
in a problematic fashion; ownership of land is determined and accepted according to
 political decisions made following the founding of the state, and the courts follow these
decisions (Kedar A S, 2004).

The official authorities derive their power from a firm financial base, from public
legitimacy gained by being part of the establishment, and by controlling resources,
especially land and houses. Additionally – the establishment has a threatening side, as the
police and the secret service ("Shabak") are subordinate to it. The use of both
psychological and brute force is shown as justified through the portrayal of the local
population as criminal and intruding. We are witnessing a cynical and manipulative use
of such terms as "justice" and "the rule of law", made to justify the implementation of
force in the service of immoral acts.

B) Local forces.
The affected residents – The demolition and eviction procedures are not run collectively
against the residents, but on an individual level against each and every family by itself.
Hundreds of families are both threatened and harmed in different fashions. Some of them
have no alternative home if they loose the one they have. Most of the families do not
seem to comprehend that they are dealing with an overall policy, with a collective rather
than a private problem. In most cases, the affected families do not have the means to hire
lawyers, nor the understanding of the serious limitations of resisting on no level but the
judicial one. For the most part the affected parties have no faith in public campaigns, and
fear that both local and national political parties would use their plight for political gains.
Local community and leadership – Dr. Daniel Monterescu has commented on the
Palestinian community in Jaffa that "fifty years of marginalization, neglect and attempts
of Jew-ification have turned Jaffa into a place where the social and cultural boundaries
are weak and fragile – both inwards and outwards of the Arab community". The Jaffa
community does not have a history of popular struggles, nor a culture allowing such a
struggle. The breaking down of the community into small groups of conflicting identities
is one of the main elements allowing attacks on the local population.
The local leadership I would divide, following observation and experience, into three
core groups – the religious leadership (the Islamic movements, the Orthodox Union), the
political leadership relating to the National Arab Party, the Communist party or various
Zionist parties, and the civilian society NGOs.
Solidarity Groups - Mainly groups of non-Zionist radical leftist Jews. These are groups
which form but a meager percent of the Jewish population, yet are highly motivated and
are relatively well-organized. These groups have significant abilities in recruiting
activists, much experience in popular struggles, and a fairly high accessibility to Hebrew
media.
The strengths of the forces trying to resist the establishment's policy and to change the
rules of the game are derived, or could derive, from the ability to acquire judicial and
parliamentary tools while using an argumentation of justice and morality, from creating a
counter-balance by organizing a wide popular protest, and from using the media to
uncover the wrongs and the manipulations, again – by stressing their moral superiority.

Planning the struggle and building a popular force

The struggle was born out of the attention of several lawyers, who noticed the significance of
the amount of demolition and eviction notices handed out to Jaffa families recently.
The leadership of the struggle promptly realized that it is dealing with an overall policy,
aiming to evict thousands of local residents in order to attract capitalists and entrepreneurs,
and to change the neighborhoods' entire character. The establishment bodies involved based
their policy on hiding the collective level and focusing on specific cases. "The issue is not, as
you would have it, that of a demolition-wave, but a treatment of specific families who have
broken the law", said a representative of the ILA in a meeting. The authority's ability to harm
weakened populations, in a cooperation of interests with capitalists, is based on the following
factors:
• Introverting oppression – A weakened population often introverts the basic
oppressive rules of the game, and adopts the very manipulative discourse that is
meant to mask the oppression.
• A feeling of inability – A situation that can manifest itself in a lack of solidarity
between those directly affected and those non-directly affected, as well as in a lack of
solidarity between the affected themselves. One might fear to pay a price for other
people's causes, when uncertain that they will in turn show solidarity with him/her
once their needs are fulfilled.
• Use of local players – In principle, the inclusion of local leaders in the establishment
is a positive thing. Yet in many cases, such as this one, local leaders who operate out
of personal or narrow sartorial interests are used as agents of a policy harmful to their
own communities. This is enabled when such agents succeed in branding themselves
as fighters for the community, thus playing a double-game which hides the bigger
picture.
• Inaccessibility – A weakened population might prove to be passive and defenseless
due to unawareness to civil rights, a lack of the financial resources needed to hire a
lawyer, and a misunderstanding of its own situation (Ganz Marshall, 2002). In our
case, many people didn't know there was a court ruling standing against them. "We
weren't told they're coming to demolish. They just came and said they have a court
order", claimed one of the people whose house has been demolished.

The first step in organizing the struggle was spontaneous, responsive and unplanned, and
came when we heard of an immediate eviction notice a family has received. Yet, already in
this phase it was clear that the infrastructure must be laid for a long-run struggle, and that we
needed to think of ways to motivate and enlist the street (Mondros and Wilson, 1994). This
struggle cannot rely solely on a defense and on activity on the judicial level, as the heart of
the problem is the existing law and the definition of land ownership.
For reasons explained above, there was considerable difficulty in getting local forces in the
city together for a popular resistance against the immediate demolition. Many attempts were
made to get local activists and groups to fortify in the house as a direct non-violent action
against the demolition, yet responsiveness was very low.
Eventually the first demolition was stopped due to the fortification of tens of outside leftists
Jewish activists who joined the struggle, and also due to the success in getting a
postponement through the court. The event was covered by the press, and created an echo.
Success in stopping the first demolition gave a tremendous push forward to our ability to
organize and build the struggle, for several reasons:
- It was an example of success, lifting the spirits and the belief in resistance through
civilian action.
- Word spread quickly through the city, and made other affected families join.
- The wide media coverage put the entire issue on the current agenda, and put pressure
on authorities.
- The local leadership, which originally was slow to respond, was now under pressure
of expectations from the street, not wanting to be left behind.
Yet in spite of this, response from the street was too slow when considering the pressing need
to organize fast. The first question on our agenda now, after having stopped the first
demolition, was how we can create a wide popular protest through the building of a public
force that would be capable of resisting and pressuring to change the policy from its core.
Many obstacles were in our way: A long history of conflicts between some of the political
parties and groups in Jaffa, a weakened population and a crumbled community with no
culture of solidarity and collective action, and an economic dependence of local businesses in
outside Jewish customers (which made them fear of a popular uprising that would harm
business).
On the other hand, there is great potential in the fact that there are large numbers of
Palestinian residents under vital threat. Therefore the chances of motivating people to
organize a wide struggle are greater as well.

The second step focused on planning the struggle for the long run, starting by contacting all
the action groups in the city; political parties, NGOs and other organizations, and
neighborhood committees. This step included the setting of a joint meeting, in order to form
a popular committee that will unite all forces and represent the local leadership and lead the
struggle. The public and media echo gained by the prevention of the first demolition, as well
as the involvement of activists who are foreign to Jaffa inner politics and sensitivities, helped
this initiative succeed, and a popular committee uniting most local forces was formed. The
formation of a popular committee which has public legitimacy was a necessary step towards
the building of long-term strategy and forming demands.

The third step focused on agreeing on the struggle's demands, on its ways of action, and on
a functional structure for the organization. The committee agreed on three central demands:
A) Legalizing what is – a full acknowledgement of building expansions and of invasions
previously considered illegal.
B) An allocation of lands for the benefit of public housing, allowing the community to
use the land to solve existing housing problems, and giving a fair response for future
expansions in the population.
C) Devising a module based on involving the local population in planning that directly
affects it, in light of the principle that Jaffa residents have the first priority in use of
their city's lands and property.

The committee decided to act on three levels via three sub-committees:

1. The legal level – A group of lawyers, alternative urban-design experts and
local activists will check legal possibilities for a class-action in the name of all
residents, challenging the planning policy, stopping open-market tenders,
preventing demolitions and evictions, and opening negotiations with the
relevant authorities.
2. The media level – striving to get maximum exposure, and transmit the
messages of the popular committee. The media is a powerful tool capable of
creating a public echo, pressuring the establishment, and helping to create a
local momentum for the organization of a popular struggle.
3. The public-protest level – The surfacing of the conflict and creating awareness
to there being a collective issue, rather than individual cases. Building a local
popular force by helping the affected residents organize, by leafleting, and by
turning the issue into a "word on the streets". The popular struggle with also
be manifested in organizing neighborhood meetings, demonstrations, direct
actions exposing the double-standards of land allocations etc.

Make injustice visible and Power-coercive

 The three sub-committees have met, and each has formed a six-month action plan. At the
current phase, the struggle focuses on building a public force both internally and externally.
On the internal axis there is a need to expose the wide picture, raise awareness, and empower
the community from the inside, so that it would feel fit to face the challenges ahead. This is
achieved through political events, through the willingness of religious leaders to promote the
issue within their parishes, and through leafleting and using the local media. On the external
axis, there is a need to work together with as many solidarity groups as possible. The
solidarity groups are important for propaganda on the Jewish street, recruiting activists, and
presenting the struggle as a joint Arab-Jewish one.
So far two neighborhood meetings, a large local demonstration and a high-profile academic
convention have taken place, while a rally opposite the Tel Aviv municipality is planned. On
the establishment level - a discussion in the parliament's committee for internal affairs
concluded in a series of positive recommendations, and a meeting has been set between the
popular committee and the ILA.
In a long struggle, that has just started, one can so far mark the success in surfacing the
problem (Marshall Ganz, 2001), making it an issue on the public agenda. The local
population appears to be awakening, both local and national media are interested in the
struggle, and the ILA seems more willing to negotiate with the leadership.
This conflict entails very wealthy and powerful bodies. Our basic assumption was based on
the belief that we are facing a conflict of interests and perceptions, and not a
misunderstanding to be solved by negotiations or connections. In a conflict of such a profile
the possibility to counter-organize, to protest and struggle, are the main tools for changing
the current balance. The strategy now should proceed with caution and sophistication, but it
is clear that the direction should be the building of a growing popular public force, while
constantly analyzing and mapping out the processes taking place.

:References
Monteriscu, Danny, (2007), “The Palestinian Community in Jaffa: planning and social report”,
((heb

Forman G, Kedar A S. (2004), "From Arab land to 'Israel Lands': the legal dispossession of the
Palestinians displaced by Israel in the wake of 1948" Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space 22(6) 809 – 830,(Heb)

Kedar A S, (2004). Areas of Weakness: the Israeli legal system and the ethno national space in
Israel, State and society, pp. 845-884

Yiftahel, O. (2000). Land, planning and injustice, Adava Centre Publications.

http://www.adva.org/view.asp?lang=he&catID=11&articleID=290

Ganz Marshall (2002), “Organizing: People Power and Change”, Harvard.

Mondros and Wilson. (1994), “The Organizers”, Columbia University Press

Marshall Ganz (2001), The Power of Story in Social Movements. Harvard University

Gershon Shafir. (1993) Land labor and population in Zionist colonization, general and unique
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