More than 120 activists, neighborhood residents, lawyers, professionals and government representatives gathered on June 4 in Ramle to mark five years of SHATIL’s Mixed Cities Project and to reflect on the activity, achievements, challenges and lessons derived from its work. The joining together of these forces on stage and in the audience of the conference, Leading Change in the Mixed Cities, is a reflection of the success of SHATIL’s effort to empower minority communities in the mixed cities of Ramle, Lod, Acre and Jaffa and to effect changes in discriminatory policies.
NIF Board and SHATIL Committee member and Fellow of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Dr. Sarah Ozacky-Lazar and Gianmatteo Arena, head of the Operations Section of the European Commission’s Delegation to the State of Israel, greeted the attendees. Arena described SHATIL’s Mixed Cities Project as “extraordinary” in its aspirations and contribution. Three panels featuring residents and professionals brought to light the successes and challenges of the Project during the past five years in promoting alternative planning for the development and revitalization of the mixed cities. They addressed the issues challenging Arab residents and their neighborhoods in these cities: preservation and renovation; demolitions and evictions; and the state’s recognition and incorporation of neighborhoods into state plans. In the panel, The Preservation and Restoration of City Centers in the Mixed Cities, architect Doron Druckman, the Interior Ministry’s Director of Planning, and chair of the National Preservation Team, praised the Mixed Cities Project as providing “threads of hope” for its initiatives in cultivating local leaders, who he said were a vital partner with the planning authorities in creating new frameworks for change. In the panel, Unrecognized Neighborhoods in the Mixed Cities, Dr. Yosef Jabareen, senior lecturer in the architecture faculty at the Technion, spoke about the alternative planning processes he carried out for the Project in cooperation with the residents for two neighborhoods: Basatin el-Raml (Barbur) in Acre and El Mahta, or the Train neighborhood in Ramle. Several speakers argued about whether politics could be divorced from planning and whether preservation is not as much about people as it is about buildings. in the panel on Home Demolitions and Evictions, Durgham Seif, a lawyer for Karame accused the government of not only refusing to plan for the unrecognized neighborhoods, but placing obstacles in the path of those who try to initiate such planning. He said the fact that the unrecognized neighborhoods aren’t on any map means that thousands of people aren’t on a map and planning for them must be initiated. He emphasized that the Mixed Cities Project’s strategy of combining legal and planning initiatives to get these neighborhoods recognized is on the right track.
Architect Buthayna Dabit, head of SHATIL’s Mixed Cities Project, said: “The city centers are like a living organism. If we harm them, it’s akin to harming the heart of the organism. We hope this conference will inspire the continued building of models to promote the planning and housing rights in the Arab neighborhoods and to true cooperation and respectful and respectable neighborly relations between the Jewish and Arab populations in the mixed cities. This is a necessary condition for the social and economic advancement of the people living in Israel’s mixed cities.”
SHATIL initiated the Mixed Cities Project, with the support of the European Commission, five years ago, in response to long term neglect and discrimination leading to growing distress in the field. Home demolitions and evictions of Arab citizens in the cities of Ramle, Lod, Acre and Jaffa were rising sharply and residents had no voice in policies determining their lives. The Mixed Cities staff works to bring about a paradigm shift among local residents, decision makers and the general public in order to promote a new reality of equality in housing, infrastructure and planning as well as social justice for Arab residents of Israel’s mixed cities. The Project’s Arab and Jewish staff does this by activating residents, strengthening local civil society, raising awareness and creating and commissioning and promoting alternatives to discriminatory planning and building policies and practices.
