Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

Arabs flee home due to racist threats

23 December 2010

By Hassan Shaalan, Ynet.com – 23 Dec 2010
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4003502,00.html

Four Muslims, Druze forced out of rented flat in Tel Aviv after neighbors, who say rabbi told them Arabs must leave, vandalize their home and threaten to attach explosives to their car. ‘I felt humiliated by hatred,’ says Abbas, who served in IDF

Five residents of the north, four Muslims and a Druze, were forced to leave their apartment in southern Tel Aviv due to threats and persecution by their Jewish neighbors, Ynet learned Thursday.

“I felt humiliated by the hatred,” said Ganem Abbas, the young Druze man, who has served in the IDF.

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Abbas, originally from Abu Sinan in the north, came to the center of Israel two weeks ago in order to work at a construction site in Jaffa, which he says is owned by the municipality. He and his friends decided to rent an apartment nearby, in Shapiro neighborhood in Tel Aviv.

But three days ago the friends returned home in the evening to see that their main water pipe had been broken. Gas bottles had been stolen.

“The landlady told me that people from the neighborhood had threatened to torch the house and attack her if we don’t get out, because we’re Arabs,” Abbas said.

He also described a particularly humiliating moment. “The neighbors came out and started to yell that they don’t want to see Arabs in the neighborhood, and that it is for Jews only,” he recounted.

“When we heard that, four of the guys decided to go back up north because they felt their lives were in danger.”

Mahmoud Dalasha, 37 from the village of Bu’eine, says the neighbors “sent their kids to swear at us”. Ganem stayed because he is Druze, Dalasha said, but the rest fled the area.

“There were dozens of people there who said they had asked the rabbi, who told them we had to be evicted,” he recounted. Dalasha added that the neighbors had threatened to attach an explosive device to his car.

Dalasha blames the government “for everything going on with racism, because I guess Arabs don’t count in this country”.

“(The government) is just working to expel Arabs from their lands, but this will never happen. We will stand up to all the racism and hatred,” he vowed.

“I came to Tel Aviv to work and support my family, not to go wild, but now I have to look for other work.”

Abbas, for his part, has reached the conclusion that “racism is getting stronger everywhere after the rabbis’ call not to rent to Arabs, and the day may come when we are expelled from the state though we are a part of it”.

“This act destroys coexistence. I feel humiliated from this intolerable cruelty. Despite serving in the army and telling the neighbors this, but they didn’t care and only gave us the evil eye. I have heard stories about Arabs who were fired for speaking their mother tongue – even that disturbs the racists.”

Landlady Ora Iwan told Ynet she had not instructed the five to leave, and that she was equally shocked by her neighbors’ behavior. “They said they would make my life very difficult if I didn’t tell the Arabs to get out,” she said.

However Iwan is fearful of filing an official complaint. “If they had weapons they would have used them. After what I saw, I think racism against Arabs will continue,” she said.

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