Arab and Jew by David K. Shipler

Author:David K. Shipler [Shipler, David K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-101-90304-9
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

The ancient city of Nazareth lies cupped in the curves of the Jezreel Valley west of Mount Tabor. The crooked streets wind among the brown stone houses of the Arabs, beneath the confusion of domes and cupolas that crown the multitudes of churches and monasteries. The alleyways are filled with the clatter of crowds, the constant motion of shoppers, merchants, tourists, and priests.

Nazareth is an Arab city, and so the Jews have erected Upper Nazareth, which stands on a high bluff above as a fortress of gleaming white concrete apartment buildings. The structures there are bland and regular, the streets broad and quiet, embracing a suburban mood. Built in the 1950s as a Jewish town for the working class, Upper Nazareth has evolved into one of Israel’s few integrated communities as Arab families have gradually moved in. And thus it has also become a crucible of Arab-Jewish antagonism, a place where the tools of bigotry are forged. The friendships between Arabs and Jews are few and fragile. Distaste has proved powerfully corrosive. No collection of Israeli Jews can provide a more comprehensive catalogue of the multiple, overlapping and contradictory stereotypes applied to Arabs than those residents of Upper Nazareth who have organized to kick the Arabs out. And although Arabs who choose to live there are, by the process of self-selection, fairly moderate politically, they are learning bitterness.

Tewfik Abud, a slim Christian Arab who works as a foreman in a Jewish-owned plumbing company, was thirty-two years old in 1973 when he and his wife, Monira, were living in a small, rundown house in Nazareth. They could not find decent housing in the Arab city, and since he was commuting anyway to his job in an Upper Nazareth factory, they began to consider the unthinkable—a move into Jewish territory. “I talked with my friends, and especially with my brother-in-law, who is a lawyer,” Abud recalled. “He said, ‘Are you ready to live there?’ Our family said, ‘The children, how will they grow up? How will their security be?’ ” He had no ready answer except that he was willing to take a risk. He found a Jew who agreed to rent him an apartment, and Tewfik Abud thus became one of the first Arabs to settle in Upper Nazareth. “I rented it for two years.” he said. “After two years he came and said to me, ‘I want to sell.’ I’d already invested a lot, and I didn’t want to move, so I decided, yes, I wanted to buy.”

His problem was raising the money. If he had done a stint in the Israeli army or had served as a policeman, he would have qualified for a government-supported loan or another apartment directly from the Housing Ministry at a price well below the market value. But the army does not take Arabs, except for Bedouins and Druse, and Abud was not among the few Arabs who have worked as policemen. So he went to a commercial bank for a mortgage. “I had to go there many times,” he said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.