{"id":55273,"date":"2015-03-16T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=55273"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:57","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:57","slug":"arab-village-fears-being-wiped-off-israels-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/arab-village-fears-being-wiped-off-israels-map\/","title":{"rendered":"Arab Village Fears Being Wiped Off Israel\u2019s Map"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dahmash residents say they are being targeted because they are the only Palestinian community that remains in central Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n

12 Mar 2015 – <\/em>According to Israel\u2019s official records, the 600 inhabitants of Dahmash village live in a single building \u2013 one that no longer exists.<\/p>\n

The villagers\u2019 story may sound like the basis for a sinister fairy tale, but their plight is all too real.<\/p>\n

Next week their case reaches Israel\u2019s highest court and the outcome is likely to decide whether Dahmash survives or is destroyed.<\/p>\n

For decades officials have refused to recognise the village\u2019s 70 actual homes, trapped between the towns of Ramle and Lod, and only 20 minutes\u2019 drive from Tel Aviv, Israel\u2019s most vibrant city.<\/p>\n

Arafat Ismail, the village leader, said that while industrial parks, shopping malls and estates of luxury villas had sprung up all around them, Dahmash\u2019s residents had been treated like \u201cillegal squatters\u201d.<\/p>\n

Deprived of recognition in their own village, all the families have been registered as living in a building on the edge of the neighbouring town of Ramle. However, that house was destroyed years ago as nearby rail and road arteries expanded.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, unless we can stop them, the authorities will wipe our real homes off the map too,\u201d said Ismail, aged 54.<\/p>\n

\u2018Stick in their throat\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

What distinguishes Dahmash from the communities around it is that it is Arab, an apparently unwelcome relic from a time when the country was called Palestine.<\/p>\n

Dahmash\u2019s inhabitants belong to Israel\u2019s large Palestinian minority, descendants of\u00a0those who managed to remain inside the borders of the new state of Israel in 1948.<\/p>\n

Today, these 1.5 million Palestinian citizens comprise a fifth of Israel\u2019s population, but complain of systematic discrimination. Most of their deprived communities are to be found in Israel\u2019s so-called peripheries, in the north or south, out of view of most Israeli Jews.<\/p>\n

But located in the midst of Tel Aviv and its satellite towns, \u201cDahmash is like a stick in their throat,\u201d said Ali Shaaban, who raises sheep and goats in the village.<\/p>\n

His own smartly appointed, two-storey home is one of 16 that face immediate demolition if the villagers lose next week\u2019s court hearing.<\/p>\n

Since the families were moved by the Israeli authorities to this location from other parts of the country shortly after the 1948 war, they have found Dahmash turned into an embattled enclave.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like they are slowly trying to squeeze us until we reach breaking point and leave,\u201d said Shaaban, aged 53.<\/p>\n

Such fears have only been heightened by bellicose statements<\/a> from local officials. Yoel Lavi, Ramle\u2019s long-time mayor, told a journalist in 2006 that the government should send in special armed units and military bulldozers as it does in the occupied territories.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you give the first shock with the crane everyone runs from their houses, don\u2019t worry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hills of uncollected rubbish<\/strong><\/p>\n

Surrounded on all sides by the towns of Ramle and Lod and by an exclusively Jewish farming community called Nir Zvi to the north, Dahmash can be reached only by crossing a series of railway lines, along a potholed dirt track that floods through the long winter months.<\/p>\n

Large piles of rubbish litter the streets and have to be burnt by residents, said Ismail, because Lod Valley Regional Council, which has jurisdiction over the area, refuses to take responsibility for the village.<\/p>\n

A maze of jerry-rigged electricity and water lines, connected to a handful of the original buildings in Dahmash, provide a threadbare link to modern convenience.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine running six or seven homes off a supply line designed for just one,\u201d said Shaaban.<\/p>\n

Parents, meanwhile, have had to battle in the courts to get their children \u2013 with no recognised address \u2013 accepted into local schools. Petitions for a kindergarten, playground, park, health clinic and a cemetery have all been rejected.<\/p>\n

Various family-run businesses in the village, including a scrap metal yard, car repair garages, taxi service and building merchant, have closure orders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like we are invisible here, except when they want to make trouble for us or to demolish our homes,\u201d said Shaaban.<\/p>\n

He and the 20 other members of his family who share the same house have been living with just such a threat for the past decade.<\/p>\n

In 2007, they were tipped off before massed ranks of police arrived to enforce the demolition of 13 homes. He and the other families managed to foil the effort by locking themselves into their homes.<\/p>\n

In recent months, however, the threat is back in full force, as officials wait for the villagers to exhaust their last legal avenues before the courts.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou go to bed, and you never know whether in the morning you will wake to find your house is about to be turned into rubble,\u201d Shaaban said.<\/p>\n

Oversight from 1948<\/strong><\/p>\n

The authority\u2019s hostility, according to the villagers, derives from Dahmash\u2019s exceptional status: it is the only Palestinian community that survived in central Israel from the period of the 1948 war.<\/p>\n

Israeli historians have documented how Israel destroyed more than 500 Palestinian villages to prevent the return of some 750,000 refugees who had been expelled during the fighting. But allowing a Palestinian community to survive so close to Tel Aviv appears to have been an oversight.<\/p>\n

Yitzhak Rabin, who would later become prime minister, recounted his experiences as the area\u2019s military commander in 1948. In a censored section of his memoirs, revealed in the New York Times<\/a>, he remembered how Israel\u2019s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, responded when asked what to do with the 50,000 surrendering Palestinians of Lydda and Ramleh \u2013 later to be reinvented as the Jewish towns of Lod and Ramle \u2013 neighbouring Dahmash.<\/p>\n

\u201cBen Gurion waved his hand in a gesture that said: \u2018Drive them out!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In an influential article published in the New Yorker in 2013, Israeli commentator Ari Shavit admitted that hundreds of Lydda\u2019s residents were massacred by Israeli soldiers in Lydda and tens of thousands more driven out on a forced march to the West Bank.<\/p>\n

In a historic assessment that appears to inform the authorities\u2019 current concerns about Dahmash, Shavit concluded that the survival of Palestinian communities in the area was incompatible with the success of Israel as a Jewish state.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the very beginning,\u201d he wrote<\/a>, \u201cthere was a substantial contradiction between Zionism and Lydda. If Zionism was to exist, Lydda could not exist. If Lydda was to exist, Zionism could not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ismail said: \u201cWhat they carried out in 1948 was the ethnic cleansing of the Tel Aviv area. They left only Dahmash \u2013 now six decades later they are trying to complete the ethnic cleansing by destroying our village.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Shaaban, the villagers would already have lost the legal battle had they not had the \u201ctabu\u201d \u2013 land deeds \u2013 showing that they are the owners. \u201cWithout those documents, we\u2019d have been finished long ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Battle with planners<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court hearing on 16 March \u2013 the same day as the Israeli elections \u2013 is the last stage in a planning battle the villagers began waging a decade ago to end the demolition threat, said their lawyer, Kais Nasser.<\/p>\n

The village\u2019s difficulties, he said, stemmed from a refusal by the planning authorities to discuss rezoning the land from agricultural to residential use, even though this had been done for neighbouring Jewish communities, including Nir Zvi, next door to Dahmash.<\/p>\n

The planning authorities have rejected the villagers\u2019 appeals for recognition, including the submission of a master plan in 2007 to allow for construction. Nasser said the interior ministry had failed to respond to his letters.<\/p>\n

In their official response to the Supreme Court petition, government lawyers have called for the villagers to \u201cmove elsewhere\u201d. Nasser said the implication is that they should buy homes in either Ramle or Lod.<\/p>\n

Both are among a half dozen so-called \u201cmixed cities\u201d in Israel. In practice, they are Jewish towns with small \u201cghetto-like\u201d Arab neighbourhoods, where unemployment, crime and drugs prevail.<\/p>\n

Recent research suggested that 70 per cent of Arab homes in the two towns are illegal and under threat of demolition.<\/p>\n

Yoav Beirach, a local academic who is among a group of Jewish solidarity activists supporting Dahmash\u2019s struggle, said: \u201cThe issue of justice aside, moving from Dahmash to Lod or Ramle would probably be like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

No new Arab community<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2010, the central region\u2019s planning committee concluded that there was \u201cno justification for the creation of a new village in central Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOfficials say they are against encouraging new communities, but that only seems to apply to Arab communities,\u201d said Nasser. \u201cI have found five examples of the government establishing new communities for Jews in the last few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suhad Bishara, a planning expert with the Adalah legal centre in Haifa, said Israel had refused to create a single new Arab community since Israel\u2019s establishment, despite a near 10-fold increase in the Palestinian population over that time.<\/p>\n

Overcrowding and poor infrastructure was rife in the minority\u2019s communities, she added.<\/p>\n

Dahmash is one of several dozen Arab \u201cunrecognised villages\u201d across Israel, although the only one in the country\u2019s centre. Most are Bedouin communities in the Negev.<\/p>\n

The government officially shelved<\/a> the Prawer Plan in late 2013 to forcibly move tens of thousands of the Bedouin off their ancestral lands in the Negev after the Palestinian minority mounted mass protests.<\/p>\n

Harming property sales<\/strong><\/p>\n

A report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch on Dahmash in 2010 criticised the Israeli authorities<\/a> for treating residents \u201cas if they don\u2019t exist\u201d.<\/p>\n

It also noted that the planning process lacked transparency. Yoel Lavi, Ramle\u2019s mayor, sat on the planning committee that rejected Dahmash\u2019s master plan, despite his own efforts to initiate a new \u201cflagship\u201d neighbourhood of Ramle in 2004 over Dahmash\u2019s only access road.<\/p>\n

The report included comments from Lavi to Israeli TV in 2004 in which he warned that allowing Palestinians to live nearby would \u201charm the ability to market the project since people [Jews] won\u2019t want to live there.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that \u201c93 percent of the Jewish population clearly prefers not to live in a mixed building\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ismail said the authorities had significantly stepped up their campaign of harassment in Dahmash after Lavi announced his plan.<\/p>\n

Dahmash\u2019s children have traditionally attended school in Ramle, where nearly a quarter of residents are from the Palestinian minority and their children are served by\u00a0a separate Arab education system.<\/p>\n

However, in 2005 Lavi refused to provide Dahmash\u2019s children with school transport<\/a>, and a year later stop registering first graders. Lavi\u2019s decision were overturned by the courts.<\/p>\n

Both the interior ministry and Lavi\u2019s spokesman, Roni Barzeli, were unavailable for comment.<\/p>\n

Dahmash is due to stage a large music festival on Saturday to draw attention to its court case.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/a> for Journalism.<\/em> The same year, Project Censored<\/a> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While industrial parks, shopping malls and estates of luxury villas have sprung up all around them, Dahmash\u2019s residents have been treated like \u201cillegal squatters\u201d. What distinguishes Dahmash from the communities around it is that it is Arab, an unwelcome relic from a time when the country was called Palestine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}