City of Oranges

by Adam LeBor

  There are parallels between Old Jaffa and Frank’s hometown of Danzig. He went back once and, like the Hammamis’ visit to their house in Jebaliyyeh, it was a poignant journey. ‘Danzig was levelled by the Russian artillery, and then they expelled the Germans. The Poles later rebuilt a few of the main streets as a showcase, in the Gothic and Hanseatic styles, but there were just props behind them, holding them up. We had lived around the corner at one time from one of the reconstructed streets. I could not see the entrance to our house, only the reconstructed façade of the nearby street.’ Frank’s childhood home had vanished. ‘In both Old Jaffa and Danzig the original population has been kicked out. It was like walking through a film set. I took a trip on a tourist bus to the hinterland around the city. It was full of Prussian landowners, coming back for a last look. It was exactly like the Arab who came back after 1967 to see my neighbour’s house and started to cry. There are squatters there, and squatters here.’

  25

  A Possible Future

  Present Day

  When Israel competes in the Eurovision song contest, or a football match, we say ‘they got so many points’. But Amina (Robyn) says, ‘We got so many points.’

  Wedad Andraus, Robyn’s aunt

  Like Khamis Abulafia, the Andraus sisters – Suad, Wedad and Leila – are caught between two worlds. They live in Israel, but are not fully Israeli. They are Christian Arabs, but many of their friends are either foreigners or Jewish. War heightens the contradictions of their lives. It was in 1973, when Israel’s very survival seemed threatened, that they found themselves pulled strongly in opposite directions, says Wedad. ‘We had good Jewish friends in the army. We worried about them and some were pupils of mine. We did not want the Egyptians to lose, and although Israel was fighting our people, we put this aside because of the human contact we have with our Jewish friends. We felt we were not with Israel, but with them. Nowadays we usually do not discuss politics when we visit each other. We know exactly what they think and they know what we think.’

  Amin Andraus’ children have all made successful careers. Leila is an administrator and Wedad a teacher at the Tabeetha School, while Suad is pro-consul at the British Consulate in Tel Aviv, where she has worked since 1964. In the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, Suad was made an MBE. The British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, held a party for her at the embassy residence, where the guests included the pharmacist Fakhri Geday. It was all very reminiscent of the Mandate days she had heard so much about from her father Amin. ‘I am British pro-consul but I am not British, and I am a member of the British empire, and there is no empire,’ she quips. Her brother Salim also worked at the consulate for many years as an accountant. All four chose to work in British or British-founded institutions, explains Wedad. ‘We worked with the British because we would have felt like outsiders if we’d worked at Jewish institutions.’ The Andraus family’s world, of pre-1948 Jaffa, vanished in the Nakba, but they have adapted to the new one in which they live, says Suad. They are all involved in Jaffa life, and regularly attend baptisms, weddings and funerals among Jaffa’s Christian community. But none of the sisters ever married, as after 1948 their potential partners were scattered across the Middle East, and the rest of the world. Before he died in 1972, Amin Andraus told Salim to look after his sisters. ‘He has done that to the letter, and we all rely very strongly on each other,’ says Suad.

  It is on the West Bank and in Ramallah, home to many of the old Jaffa families, that the traditions of pre-Nakba Palestine live on. Like Communist eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, in some respects that way of life has been frozen in a time capsule. There are many benefits to this, including a greater respect for family and home and the traditions that give Arab society a rare cohesion in the modern world. Those paying family and social visits will dress up, the men usually wearing suits and ties, in contrast to the informality of an Israeli gathering. Guests are never allowed to pay for themselves in a restaurant. But modernisation, the breakdown of ethnic barriers, and intermarriage between Jews and Arabs in Israel proper, are generating a new and beneficial phenomenon, one that could yet help solve the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum. Behira Buchbinder, the Jewish resident of Ajami, argues that ‘mixed marriages are the highest form of co-existence between Jews and Arabs.’ One of Amin Andraus’ neighbours once told him something similar, recalls Wedad. ‘He said there is only one way you can solve this Arab-Jewish problem, which is to mix, to bring forward a new generation.’

  That too could be part of the Andraus family’s legacy to Jaffa. When Salim was forty he married Hillana, a Jewish woman from Romania. Marriages between Jews and Arabs are rare in Israel. Salim and Hillana have two children, Amin, who works as a lawyer in Tel Aviv, and his sister Robyn (Amina), who works with underprivileged children. Both went to Tabeetha School. Suad and her sisters welcomed Hillana into the family, but worried about the religious and cultural divide and its effect on Salim’s children. In fact Amin and his sister’s mixed background means they can move with ease in both Arab and Jewish society, and have many friends in both. ‘We are not fanatically political but we would like to retain our Arab Palestinian identity,’ says Suad. ‘We keep Christmas and other Christian traditions in our house. Hillana is very good to us, and we are to her.’

  With her close-cropped black hair, modish clothes and fluent, accentless Hebrew, Robyn Andraus would fit in at any of Tel Aviv’s trendy bars and cafés. Before graduating from a teachers’ training college in Creative Education, Robyn studied Cinema and Media at Tel Aviv University. She felt completely at home. ‘I never felt an outsider there as a student, as I never based my identity on religion. The only place where I was expected to do that, by my peers, was at Tabeetha School. I couldn’t do that, so that made me an outsider. But at home we got a little bit of everything, we spoke Hebrew, and grew up in normal Israeli culture. Now I work with Arab people in Jaffa and I never feel an outsider, and I work with Jewish people in Tel Aviv and never feel an outsider.’

  Like her grandfather Amin, Robyn was taught to be independent and resilient at an early age. Salim Andraus was the only Arab father she knew who allowed his daughter to stay overnight at a friend’s house. Together with her brother Amin, Robyn learnt judo, and she won the Israeli championship three years running before she was fourteen. ‘Learning judo is not something that Arab girls normally do, rolling around on the floor with boys,’ she says over coffee at Books and Coffee, on Yefet Street, Israel’s only joint Jewish-Arab-owned café and bookshop. ‘My parents took us to the competitions and sat there cheering us on.’ Robyn, like Sami Abou-Shehade, is a regular at the café, one of the last places in Jaffa frequented by both Jews and Arabs.

  Robyn works with several Jaffa voluntary and community groups, helping disadvantaged young people. Most of the volunteers are Jews and the disadvantaged children Arab, but many of the middle-class Jews who move to Jaffa do not engage with the local population. For Robyn, the divide is less between Arab and Jew, than between rich and poor. Her grandfather’s house is flanked on one side by new $500,000 apartments, on the other by one of the most run-down and overcrowded apartment blocks in Jaffa. Curiously – or not – once the luxury apartments were built, the municipality began to renovate the exterior of the dilapidated block. ‘There are mixed kindergartens, mixed schools, and cultural events. The separation is more to do with money. Rich Arabs and rich Jews go to the same places, and the poorer ones don’t. We grew up learning Arabic, Hebrew and English. We had a good education, and a much better chance in life. The kids down the road go to Arab schools where the way they teach Hebrew is atrocious, and Arabic even worse. They are expected to cope with two languages and cannot read either. They don’t have a chance.’

  Robin works with a group called Teenagers at Risk (TAR), and its programmes bring tangible results. TAR organised a year-long course for youngsters who had dropped out of school, covering basic literacy and a range of skills including computing, hairdressing and car
mechanics. TAR had to request special permission for some of the students to attend as they were under house arrest. ‘These were youngsters who were breaking into cars and selling drugs. You would think that they would be too cynical to enjoy receiving a certificate that says “well done, you can read”. You could see how proud they were when they finished the course, like little kids who had worked really hard for something.’ Jaffa’s Arab community needs to do more to help itself, she says. One recent programme to train ten boys to be car mechanics received a disappointing response. The plan was for the boys to spend three days a week learning the trade, and two at school. Arab garage owners were not much interested in helping. ‘We know that when kids work, they do not steal. They don’t steal to get rich, but to get basic things. You know when they have new jeans or shoes that they have stolen a car radio, for which they get about 80 shekels (£13). There are lots of garages owned by Arab people in Jaffa who could take more interest, but they don’t understand that the delinquent kids are also part of this society.’

  But Robyn definitely does, and she has staked out her place within Israel. ‘Lots of young people have a big problem with their identity. They ask themselves, “What am I?” I am a mix, but I decided to enjoy it. I am not Jewish, I am not Christian. I am an Israeli. My mother tongue is Hebrew, which I speak better than English or Arabic. My social circle is Israeli. My best friend is Israeli. The Zionist way of thinking is that if you are Jewish you are Israeli, if you are not Jewish you are not. I reject that.’ Like Igal Ezraty, the theatre director, Robyn says that Israel should become a citizens’ state. ‘My dad’s generation says they are Palestinians who live in Israel. I say I am an Israeli. My generation was born after 1948, when being Palestinian was not an option. My dad’s generation and us grew up in two different countries. Israel now is a big blend of people and there are many foreigners here, from all over the world. I don’t think anyone should have the right of return, Jewish or Palestinian. They should be allowed to immigrate if they benefit the country. I was on a bus, listening to a Russian junkie complaining he only came to Israel because the heroin is cheaper here. Every society has criminals, but we don’t need to import them. Israel should become a normal society, and that is not such a big idea.’

  Perhaps it is apt that the grandchildren of Amin Andraus, one of the great patriarchs of Jaffa, should provide a model for Israel’s future. Robyn defines herself as Israeli, but her brother Amin identifies with his Palestinian heritage, and in a citizens’ state, that would not matter. While Robyn is spirited and vivacious, Amin is quiet and watchful. He gives careful and considered answers to questions about himself, as befits a lawyer. ‘I am not nationalistic by nature, neither for the Arab side nor the Jewish one. I am more humanistically inclined than political. I don’t see myself as closer to a certain person because he belongs to one of those groups. But while my mother is Jewish, she married a Palestinian and I grew up as a Palestinian. But I live in Israel and I have Israeli citizenship. It is complicated because Israel by definition is a Jewish state, and that excludes me. It is not a state of all its citizens, as some would like.’

  Yet Israel is an open society, ruled by law, with an independent judiciary. A recent court decision ordered the government to move the route of the wall on the West Bank, in favour of the Palestinians. Two Arab judges have been appointed to the Supreme Court, one for a regular term. A court ruling in 2002 required the Tel Aviv municipality to add Arabic – an official language in Israel – to signposts even in areas where there is no Arab population. Amin explains: ‘Israeli law is not an apartheid system, with laws saying whites go here, blacks go there. It is not on that level. The inherent discrimination in the legal system is well hidden. Studies show that Arab Palestinians coming before a judge usually receive longer sentences than Jews. It is not official, but it happens. The second main question is one of land ownership.’ But here, too, the law is evolving. A recent ruling prohibited the state from discriminating against Arab citizens who wish to buy land. The question is, why do Israeli citizens have to go to the Supreme Court to buy property in their own country, merely because they are not Jewish?

  The Andraus family are Israeli citizens, with recourse to the courts. Fadwa Hasna is not. As a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem, she has little, if any, legal redress against the whims and caprices of Israeli officials. Fadwa is stateless. She does have an Israeli identity card, a necessity to live in her home, but it is not valid for travel abroad. If she wants to travel she must apply for a laissez-passer to leave the country from the Israeli interior ministry, an arduous and intentionally humiliating process. Once abroad she is always nervous that if she stays away too long, Israeli officials will question her right to return to Jerusalem. Electricity, water and local tax bills dating back years are all carefully preserved in a thick file, evidence of her residence in the city. Fadwa also has a Jordanian travel document, which must be renewed every few years. But she does not have a passport, citizenship or any official nationality. She could apply for a Palestinian passport, but if it were granted and she became a Palestinian national, she would forfeit her right to residency in Jerusalem. Life there resembles Joseph Heller’s book Catch-22, updated by Franz Kafka, and edited by Ariel Sharon.

  Before the Nakba, trains left Jaffa and Jerusalem for Cairo, and taxis for Beirut and Damascus. Nowadays Fadwa can hardly go anywhere, especially since the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Even Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian territories, just north of Jerusalem, is off limits. ‘Our world is getting smaller and smaller,’ she says sadly. ‘We used to go to Ramallah for dinner. We drove there in half an hour, and came back at midnight, but we cannot go there now. We cannot go to Bethlehem. Even if I want to go downtown to Jerusalem I don’t take the direct road. There are always roadblocks. Soldiers take your identity card number and search the car. When my husband was sick I had to rush him to hospital – he had cancer and he was bleeding. I was waiting at the roadblock for twenty minutes and I asked to pass. The soldier told me to get back in the car. He pointed his gun at me. I told him to come and see my husband, how ill he was. He told me to call an ambulance.’ Ironically, the only place Fadwa can travel freely is within Israel. ‘Sometimes we go shopping in West Jerusalem, but we feel we are not wanted there. They search you at the door, and make you feel that you are a bomber.’

  Rema Hammami’s world is shrinking too. Before Oslo, Rema drove to Gaza in an hour and a half, passing through the Israeli army checkpoints with a wave. After the accords were signed, Israel made it almost impossible to visit Gaza, and Rema has not been there for seven years. ‘The only time I can see my friends from Gaza is when I go abroad, if we end up at a conference together. I used to throw New Year’s Eve parties in Jerusalem and friends would come from everywhere, from Gaza and Nablus. That is unimaginable now.’ The fifteen-mile journey between Rema’s home in East Jerusalem and her office at Bir Zeit University, just outside Ramallah, used to take thirty-five minutes. There was only one checkpoint, at Ad-Dahiyeh in East Jerusalem, which was fairly relaxed. After the Al-Aqsa Intifada erupted in 2000, the checkpoint at Ad-Dahiyeh became much stricter. The Israelis put up a new checkpoint by the refugee camp at Qalandiya, just north of Jerusalem, and blocked the road completely at the village of Surda, north of Ramallah.

  The simple process of trying to drive to and from work meant Rema had to negotiate a path through these three checkpoints twice a day. On the best – but these were rare – days the journey took three times as long as it should, but once she spent five hours in her car. ‘Qalandiya’s main impact was to create a constant and massive snarled traffic jam for the thousands of Palestinian commuters needing to pass between the two cities every day,’ she explains. ‘Your car is stuck in the traffic with hundreds of others, and everyone is losing their tempers. Sometimes the soldiers would suddenly open fire over your heads, because the kids in the refugee camp were throwing stones at them.’ Rema questions whether security, as Israel claims, is the real rationale
for the checkpoints. ‘Often when we finally reached the line of soldiers manning the checkpoint, they wouldn’t even bother asking for our identity papers and just waved us through, as if their function was just to make us understand that they are in control of our destiny. Or I would wait hours for my turn, and then wait more while they chatted on their mobile telephones to their girlfriends. After a while, sitting in a line, waiting that long, begins to drive you mad. Now I have a phobia about lines and queues. Even if I am in a supermarket waiting to pay at the till, I get tense and nervous.’

  At least Rema could drive through Qalandiya. At Surda, Israel erected an arduous ‘walking checkpoint’ to cut off Ramallah from its rural hinterland and the tens of thousands of Palestinians who depend on the city for everything from work to medical services. The Surda checkpoint also prevented the flow of people and traffic to Bir Zeit. Israeli army bulldozers destroyed the main road, then sealed it off at both ends with concrete blocks and mounds of rubble. Those wishing to pass through had to walk along the destroyed road until they reached the military post in the middle, where they would wait to be processed by the soldiers and then continue on foot, a two-kilometre journey in total. Israeli officials cited ‘security considerations’ as the justification for Surda and other roadblocks which do not control access in and out of Israel, but are internal checkpoints within the West Bank. But the Israeli soldiers were more interested in flirting with young women than checking for potential terrorists, says Rema. ‘They harassed young men, and sexually harassed female students. They were always trying to start a conversation, asking for their identity cards, and then saying things like, “Nice name, so what are you studying? Where do you live?” Our students are just trying to be like students anywhere – to get an education and have the basics of university life and everyday they are faced with soldiers pointing guns at them.’