The main focus of our work since 2007, has been on supporting, education social and community projects for Arab and Jewish communities in Israel.
In 2008 Multi-Exposure began working with The Jaffa Popular Committee. We have been supporting the employment of a community lawyer who is working to advise and assist the Arab community in the areas of Ajami and Jabaliya with their current housing problems. The committee represents the interests of the Local Arab community, its members are Arab and Jewish residents, and the committee works together with other social action groups active in Jaffa.
The Jaffa Popular Committee against House Demolitions and Evictions
BACKGROUND
The issue of land allocation in Jaffa is similar to that of many Arab cities in the country, with the singularity of being a mixed city and part of the greater Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality - the country's economic and cultural capital.
Before 1948, Jaffa was an important commercial and cultural centre for the Palestinian people, population totalizing 80,000 After the war, there remained less than 3,000 Arab residents.
For the following three years, the remaining Palestinian population was concentrated in A'jame and Jabaliye (two coastal neighborhoods) and put under martial law1
In parallel, in 1950 the Absentee Property Law was voted. The law provided for confiscation of property and land left behind by departed Palestinians - the so-called 'absentees' Arabs who never left Israel, who received citizenship but who stayed for a few days in a nearby village, also had their property confiscated. 95% of the population barricaded in A'jame became what is today called 'present absentees' - a person present in Israel but considered absent and whose land was thus confiscated. The confiscated lands were turned over to the Israel Land Administration (ILA)2, who then permitted the residents of A'jame to remain in the houses in which there were put, but merely as 'protected residents' and not as owners. As a result, the Palestinian population of Jaffa was deprived of ownership and saw the control over land and property pass into the hands of the newly created Jewish state. This state of affairs remains to this day
During the '70s and '80s, the ILA and the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality initiated a policy that was to shape the future of the Jaffa. First and foremost, the city banned any possibility of building and developing existing houses and was persistent in not providing Jaffa population with construction permits for the expansion of houses. Second, the municipality was consistent in neglecting the existing infrastructures - roads, public buildings and houses were left to ruins. Many houses and buildings were declared not secure for inhabitation and their residents evacuated, while the buildings themselves were sealed with concrete or destroyed. Of the approximately 3250 buildings destroyed in the '70s and '80s in A'jame itself, there were family houses, but also institutions (schools, hospital. ) that represented Palestinian history and culture. This situation has had two main consequences: one is the concentration of the evacuated population in remote housing projects within Jaffa and the second was to force the population that remained in A'jame to build extensions without permits in order to fit the increasing number of family members within the existing houses.
Today, there is no longer a policy of mass destruction. The situation is nevertheless as alarming. The neighbourhoods of A'jame and Jabaliye have the ironic disadvantage of bordering the sea, and thus their value on the real estate market has skyrocketed in the past years. While the municipality today greatly invests in Jaffa infrastructures, it is obvious that the 1LA and the municipality's new policy is the opening of Jaffa real estate to the 'free market' The ILA is acting today as a commercial body, selling its properties in open auctions to the highest bidder.
A'jame is thus being sold bit by bit on the free market - first the properties that were evacuated in the '70s and '80s and now even the properties in which there remains 'protected residents' Some of the protected residents are being 'strongly' recommended to evacuate in return of compensation, while others have received court orders for the demolition of the expansions they were forced to build. We have even heard of situations in which the ILA has sold property even before evacuating its 'protected residents', leaving the buyer to deal with the pleasant task of clearing them out.
In
2006 we supported the publication of a book entitled PHOTOGRAPHY
ALIVE by Shuka Glotman
The
journey through life can be a journey between photographs.
In contemporary culture, photographic images crowd our vision
and are an ever larger part of reality. The images echo our
memories, dreams, and visions. In the seven generations that
have passed since photography’s invention, almost every
one has engaged with the medium in some way, as a subject or
as a photographer. Hence my interest in exploring the relationship
between photography and life.
In Photography Alive I explore photographic moments that illuminate
life’s winding path. In my attempt to orient myself on
this path and to map it, I have gathered my personal reflections
and insights from life lived with photography.
What has emerged describes the junctures at which photography
has shed light on aspects of my life; my leading of dialogue
groups of Jews and Palestinians; my engagement with ecology;
my emotional and autobiographical encounters with nature. Photography
has been my companion throughout years of teaching at art schools
and in informal education in the community. Photography is also
an integral component of all of my artistic work, which addresses
the multi-cultural reality of Israel. The illuminations in this
volume are the result of my contemplating of this path, of my
journey.
PHOTOGRAPHY
ALIVE ISBN 9659100817
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Shuka
( Yehoshua/ Joshua ) Glotman was born in 1953 in Israel. The
son of Holocaust survivors who arrived to Israel as refugees
on board of an illegal boat . At the age of nine started to
photograph. During the 70's studied photography in Jerusalem
and in London at the Polytechnic of Central London. Since 1982
is involved as an artist in community art, art education, dialogue
group facilitating of Israelis and Palestinians and curating
art shows. In his mixed-media art he has a special interest
in the Israeli situation and its inter-cultural phenomena. His
works have been exhibited in shows in Israel and abroad. Currently
he is lecturing in the Tel-Aviv University and in the Beer-Sheva
University and is living in a small village in the Upper Galilee.
glotman@013.net.il
SELECTED
PUBLICATIONS
An Israel's Album (Camera Obscura 1988);
The
Photographic Language at School (with J. Guetta, University
Publications 1996);
ShukaGlotman: Here Live Happily Mr. Poetic and Mr. Pathetic
(Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2000);
David Parlov (Shuka Glotman, ed, Tel Hai Museum of Photography
2003)
