Jaffa’s times: Temporalities of dispossession and the advent of natives’ reclaimed time

Abstract

The present article addresses the changes of temporalities within a prolonged displacement process, which has been taking place in the Palestinian city of Jaffa while under Israeli rule. Various temporal perspectives have been imposed by the Israeli authorities on the emptied historical Palestinian neighborhoods, such as terra sine tempore and “ahistorical” narratives. In Al-’Ajami neighborhood, where the Palestinians who evaded expulsion during the 1948 War—the Nakba—were concentered, “freezing” planning policies were imposed until the 1990s, when “privatization” of the refugees’ houses and neoliberal urban renewal began. Following Rifkin’s (2017) notion of “temporal orientation,” this article explores the various temporal experiences of the Palestinians in Al-’Ajami, including waiting, uncertainty, rushing, and a sense of being left out of time. To grasp the multitude of forces acting upon the community, I conducted interviews with six long-standing Palestinian grassroots activists. Analysis of the narratives reveals the various temporalities and rhythms created by the intersectionality and accumulation of oppression and dispossession, including settler–colonial policies and neoliberalism, and illuminates how Jaffa’s Palestinians have coped with—and resisted—them throughout the period under discussion.

Keywords

Temporality waiting Jaffa gentrification displacement Palestine–Israel neoliberalism settler colonialism

Introduction

Jaffa city constituted a prime film location for dozens of international and Israeli movies during the 1970s and 1980s, primarily action films. In several cases—such as the American Delta Force (1986)¹—it served as an imagined war zone, slum settlement, or ruins. Although devoid of any reference to its true identity or its political or historical context, these films reflected, in a depressing way, a larger story that was unfolding, namely the ongoing endeavor to erase Jaffa’s Palestinian identity and history. The scenes featuring buildings being blown up did, in fact, show the actual demolition of Palestinian refugees’ houses. These acts echoed what had long been taking place off-screen, as roughly 70% of the houses of Al-’Ajami have been demolished since the Nakba (the 1948 War), including 3000 demolitions in the decade 1975–1985 alone (Shaqar, 1994: 27). This large-scale demolition was part of planning policies that embodied the destruction of historical neighborhoods and “freezing” (placing a ban on renovations), particularly in Al-’Ajami, in order to drive out their Palestinian inhabitants (Mazawi and Makhoul, 1991). Until the second half of the 1980s, the deterioration of the buildings was explained in the official discourse as a natural process of aging. Yet, when the neoliberal urban renewal commenced and old Palestinian houses were sold to rich Jewish investors and were renovated, this was presented as a normative, nonpolitical process of gentrification of an “authentic” space (Monterescu, 2015: 148).

Figure 1.

Satellite images of a part of Al-’Ajami. The one on the right was taken in 1949 and the one on the left was taken in 1990. An air photo to Jaffa, P/53, 7398, 1949 and Jaffa, AM/225, 3008, 1990 retrieved from the Micha Granit Maps Library at the Department of Geography, Tel Aviv University.

In a symbolic restitutive act, the Palestinian film-maker, Kamal Ja’fari, in his movie Recollection (2015), created a collage of scenes from other works that had been shot in Jaffa over the years, while erasing the actors to underscore the ruination process to which the city had been subjected. Furthermore, he zoomed-in on the Jaffian inhabitants who passed by during filming or peeked from the windows of their houses, thus placing them at the center of the “new” scenes. Ja’fari’s act is arguably not merely a recollection of the past, but also an act of reclaiming it and turning it into a visible history. The focus on the Palestinian Jaffians, who constituted the punctum in these films, to use Barthes’ (1981) term—namely an unintended detail which poignantly subverts the intended meaning of a scene—raises questions as to their temporal and spatial experiences during the period in which their neighborhoods had been “frozen,” and beyond it. Moreover, once the focus is placed on the inhabitants, the ongoing attempts to displace them cease to be a temporal policy and become an essential factor affecting the various aspects of their lives. Therefore, dispossession ought to be investigated not as an event but as a process, which embodies intangible aspects alongside the visible ones. For instance, there might be a lived sense of pressure, uncertainty, and waiting caused by manipulations and delays on the part of the authorities and real estate companies (Sakizlioğlu, 2014). In this article, I shall particularly focus on this latter aspect of displacement: waiting. This has been presented in the literature as a prevalent experience of various disempowered groups in contexts of displacement, immigration, colonization, gentrification, unemployment, and so on (Bayart, 2007; Chakrabarty, 2000; Jeffrey, 2008). While the Palestinians of Jaffa have lived under several such conditions—displacement, settler colonialism, gentrification, and marginalization—this article will address the different modes of waiting, not according to the various forms of oppression, but rather as a cumulative experience. Hence, the contribution of this article lies in its unpacking of the various temporalities created by the intersectionality and accumulation of oppression, and its scrutiny of how Jaffa’s Palestinians have coped with—and resisted—these temporalities. This intersectional oppression seems prevalent, suffered in various forms by disempowered groups, who experience different, though not totally isolated, temporalities. This is particularly so for natives living under settler–colonial regimes in which power is imposed as a dynamic structure (Wolfe, 2006) and sometimes is hard to pinpoint (Stoler, 2016). Arguably, this intersectionality and accumulation can be discerned only by focusing on the natives’ experiences and narratives (Barakat, 2018). Therefore, the present article is based on an analysis of narratives collected through interviews with long-standing Palestinian grassroots activists, all residents of Jaffa, from different backgrounds—social class and religious affiliation, educational attainments, gender, and affiliation to local associations/initiatives.

Theoretical background: Ruination and temporalities

Ruination

Until the Nakba,² Jaffa had been one of the most dynamic and cosmopolitan cities in the Middle East (Diyab and Sharabi, 1991; Levine, 2007). During the war, it was almost completely emptied of its citizens. Out of the 70,000 Palestinian inhabitants, only 3700 remained, according to the first Israeli census (Tel Aviv Municipality, 1984a: 12). The remaining inhabitants were forcibly concentrated into two neighborhoods, Al-’Ajami and Jabaliah, which were declared as being under a “state of exception” (Agamben, 1998) and were subject to military rule until June 1949. Looting, acts of cruelty, and severe restrictions on the inhabitants’ movements constituted a hallmark of this military regime. “They [the soldiers] do not stop beating the people,” complained the Military Governor of Jaffa to his superiors, referring to the collapse of order in his administration (Pappe, 2004: 205).

Meanwhile, the management (de facto ownership) of the property the refugees had been forced to abandon was entrusted to an Israeli authority called The Custodian of Absentees’ Property (CAP), under the aegis of the Ministry of Finance (Forman and Kedar, 2004: 813), while the day-to-day running of the refugees’ houses in Jaffa was put in the hands of two Israeli property management companies: Amidar and Halamish. In 1950, “The Development Authority (Transfer of Property)” Law was enacted, which enabled the transfer of absentees’ property from the CAP to a body called the Development Authority, which also operated under the auspices of the Ministry of Finance. The Authority had the warrant to sell urban refugees’ properties in the private sector (Forman and Kedar, 2004: 817–818). However, the bulk of the sell-off in Jaffa was not carried out right away, but formed part of a strategic plan for the future. In the meantime, in addition to the remaining Palestinian residents, some 45,000 Jewish immigrants³ were housed in Jaffa, including in Al-’Ajami and Jabaliah (Tel Aviv Municipality, 1984: 12, 89).

Paradoxically, this led to an improvement in the remaining Palestinians’ living conditions, as the Military Government was abolished. In April 1950, Jaffa lost its status as a Palestinian city and was annexed to Tel Aviv. This change propelled an even greater transformation. Several neighborhoods—such as Al-Manshiyya—and villages adjacent to Jaffa were all but erased and, in their place, Jewish neighborhoods were erected,⁴ embodying the colonial logic of terra nullius and terra sine tempore or in its Zionist version: “land without people, to a people without land.” Meanwhile, the few Palestinian spaces that were preserved, such as Jaffa’s Old Quarter,⁵ were presented as authentic ahistorical Mediterranean built environment. Only through “purifying processes” of de-historicizing and de-Palestinianizing could they be integrated into the Israeli logic of linear temporality, namely a singular chronological historical development, linking ancient times with present-day Israel in an unproblematic and largely spurious manner (Beit-Hallahmi, 1993: 60; Levine, 2007; Slyomovics, 2014; Wolfe, 2006; Yacobi, 2008).

Hence, in addition to the different forms of elimination to which the various neighborhoods of Jaffa were subjected, the city as a whole has been fragmented according to different temporalities, and temporal boundaries (Bruyneel, 2007: 2) have emerged. In this regard, Al-’Ajami occupied a unique place. The pre-1948 Palestinian buildings remained, while a community consisting of Jaffians and other Palestinians who migrated to the city for employment in addition to immigrant Jews continued to live in the neighborhood. This, however, contradicted the official planning for the city. As early as 1956, a Master Plan based on an urban renewal policy of evacuation–construction was prepared (Goldhaber, 2010; Levine, 2007; Mazawi and Makhoul, 1991; Monterescu and Fabian, 2003). To this end, Amidar—the company that managed the houses—employed various techniques over four decades to “encourage” the residents to leave. These included the banning of renovations and new construction, the demolition of thousands of buildings, and negligence of the infrastructure, all of which conspired to convert the neighborhood into a slum area (Mazawi and Makhoul, 1991: 64–66). The increasingly depressing state of the neighborhood was accentuated by the dumping of debris from the demolished houses on the shoreline (Figure 1). These policies of neglect succeeded in decreasing the number of Jewish residents in Al-’Ajami, as they were enticed by the offer of alternative housing. The other managing company, Halamish, stated in one of its reports that the poor housing conditions in Al-’Ajami “[did] not meet the needs and the style of Jewish families” (Halamish, 1984: 11). Consequently, the proportion of Palestinians among the neighborhood’s residents increased from 40% in the early 1970s to almost 77% by the mid-1980s (Tel Aviv Municipality, 1984: 5).

The “freezing” policy came to an end with the announcement of the regeneration of Al-’Ajami, in the late 1980s, and in line with the urban Local Outline Plan, approved in 1995. As early as 1996, the Israeli Land Administration began selling refugees’ houses. The goal of the new plan was to attract a more “stable” population, that is affluent Jews. Moreover, during the same period, Jewish gated communities began emerging (such as the Andromeda, located between Al-’Ajami and Old Jaffa) (Monterescu and Fabian, 2003) and architect “pioneers” started renovating Palestinian houses and marketing them as authentic (Levine, 2007). These trends have also been encouraged in a new Outline Plan (no. 5000) confirmed in 2016. This plan emphasizes the need to maintain the current urban texture of low-rise construction and preservation of the remaining historical buildings, and to allocate up to 50% of the construction spaces to “popular hotels and guest houses” (Article 705).

Temporalities

Various scholars have argued that the Western perspective of time is based on several temporal principles, which are founded on an imperialist belief regarding the self and “the other” (Smith, 2008). This perspective includes universality, linearity, and chronology, the element of “discovery,” and development (Smith, 2008: 29–32). Meanwhile, history, as a chronology of time’s unfolding, is presented as neutral and objective. Natives’ temporalities are portrayed as inferior and non-logical (Nanni, 2011). In various settings, such as in colonial encounters, including the case under discussion, Western temporality frequently overshadows or replaces the natives’ temporalities, for example by perceiving their space as terra sine tempore (Nanni, 2011:7). This disregard is amplified by the state, which—by means of its planning, policies, and action—presents itself as a historical agent and as the only official and legitimate narrator. In the last few decades, this role has also been assumed by private companies, which, through neoliberal means, impose their own narratives and “beginnings” on urban histories (Harvey, 2012; Zukin, 2010: 4). Those citizens who do not match these imposed narratives are considered “out of time” (Yian, 2004). Two main mechanisms are often employed by the powerful to control the time of the disfranchised groups: first, emptying it by erasing events and physical traces of their history in order to nullify their historical consciousness; and second, suspending their time to limit their movement in the space and impose a mode of waiting upon them (Jamal, 2016: 366). The imposition of “spaces of waiting” and “occupation time” on Palestinians goes back to the establishment of Israel, as Jaffa’s case shows. However, only recently did scholars begin studying these aspects, mostly with regard to Israeli policies in the West Bank, where the military regime and checkpoints present a clear example of control over Palestinians’ time (Jamal, 2008; Joronen, 2017; Meneley, 2008; Peteet, 2017).

As this description of the policies regarding Al-’Ajami neighborhood shows, since 1948 its Palestinian inhabitants have been held in a state of suspense and waiting. Meanwhile, their neighborhood has been rapidly deteriorating, and their living conditions increasingly fragile. Bourdieu (2000) argued that such a mode constitutes one among several ways of experiencing the effect of power and the link between time and power. Other modes include “adjourning, deferring, delaying, raising false hopes, or, conversely, rushing, taking by surprise” (Bourdieu, 2000: 228). Thus “zones of waiting,” in Bayart’s (2007: 274) terminology, are destined to demoralize the population and give rise to a sense of powerlessness among it. The mode of lengthy waiting is experienced according to Bourdieu (2000: 224) as an “empty time.”⁶ He argues, that it is “time to kill [as] opposed to full time”; it embodies the losing of agency and control over time, where anticipation of the forthcoming is closed off. Yet, several scholars (including Conlon, 2011; Gray, 2011; Kracauer, 1995: 139; Lombard, 2013; Mountz, 2011) have argued that prolonged waiting should be understood as an active experience. They argue it “consists of tense activity and engaged self-preparation” (Kracauer, 1995: 139) among the disempowered and can lead to the acquisition of “agency-in-waiting” (Brun, 2015) along with the emergence of a sense of moral and political community.

This conceptualization raises the need to not only examine the modes of control over time and rhythms imposed by planning and official policies but also to explore the ways in which the community experienced them. Hence, instead of reference to the “freezing” policy as merely imposed “empty time,” I examine the ways in which Palestinian inhabitants of Al-’Ajami experienced the waiting and its effects. This approach is also applied to the post-“freezing” period, where neoliberal practices such as gentrification have been added to the regimes’ tools of planning.

Methodology

Challenging the universal, linear experience of time, various scholars have emphasized the multiplicity and different temporal experiences and structures according to power-relations of race, gender, class, and other components (Massey, 1991; Smith, 2008). Beyond this multiplicity, however, Rifkin (2017: 2) suggests thinking through the lens of “temporality orientation,” which “involves reiterated and nonconscious tendencies, suggesting ways of inhabiting time that shape how the past moves toward the present and future.” With regard to native populations, he suggests that they “remain oriented in relation to collective experiences of peoplehood, to particular territories … to the ongoing histories of their inhabitance in those spaces, and to histories of displacement from them” (Rifkin 2017). Rifkin’s suggestions help to shed light on the peculiarity of the conditions of native populations under settler–colonial regimes (such as Israel). The case under study is part of a wider picture in which Israel has been endeavoring to eliminate the Palestinians and erase their past for many years (Hasan, 2019; Sa’di, 2002; Shihade, 2014; Wolfe, 2006). The policies toward Jaffa represent a direct assault on the integrity of a city that occupies a highly significant place in Palestinians’ collective consciousness.

It is in this context that I conducted interviews with six Palestinians (three women and three men), who had long careers as activists in a variety of grassroots organizations, including: Al-Rabitah–The League for the affairs of the Arabs of Jaffa, the Elected Islamic Association of Jaffa, The Orthodox Association of Jaffa, the Yafa Newspaper, the Youth Committee, the Communal Kindergartens Initiative, and the Women’s Committee. The interviewees came from different socioeconomic backgrounds and had different experiences of housing-related issues. Their names have been changed here to preserve their anonymity.

The interviews were semi-structured, to give the interviewees the space to freely narrate their experiences. Nevertheless, the issues around which the interviews revolved were limited to four general questions: the interviewee’s affinity to the city, his/her personal experience with regard to planning policies and housing issues, events that s/he perceived as meaningful in Jaffa’s history, and how s/he perceived the future of Jaffa. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and subjected to narrative analysis. This process revealed a variety of temporal experiences and perceptions, yet common to all was a non-linear view of the development of Al-’Ajami neighborhood. Admittedly, the interviewees do not constitute a representative sample, but, as active and experienced individuals in grassroots organizations that have had considerable impact on the community, their views may be considered reflective of broad currents in Jaffa. In the following section, I present the four main themes gleaned from the narratives.

Findings

1. The creation of empty time

All the interviewees considered the 1948 War to be a turning point in Jaffa’s history and the lives of the Jaffians. The city was transformed from an affluent Arab city to a neglected suburb within Tel Aviv Municipality’s jurisdiction. The first decades of Jaffa after the war were described by the interviewees in terms of disruption to the city’s vitality and development, and the isolation of its inhabitants from other Palestinian communities in Israel as well as from the Arab world. The city also lost its hinterland. For Mansour, who traces his Jaffian roots back several generations, the events of 1948 transformed Jaffa into an “island amidst a Jewish milieu.” Likewise, Nader, a long-standing activist, observed that Jaffa was robbed of its unique position by its destruction for the purposes of erasing its Palestinian history and enabling Tel Aviv to flourish. In the narratives relating to this period, all the interviewees emphasized the lack of national leadership and the loss of a sense of community. This condition had been aggravated by the omnipresence of local informers and collaborators employed by the Israeli security services. As participants explained: “People had no identity in the 1950s, there were a lot of collaborators”; and “people gave up, or even worse, they would support Mapai [the ruling party in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s], for the sake of basic services such as health insurance.” The interviewees also described a sense of anomie regarding their relationship with the new state, especially on issues relating to housing. Describing his family’s history, Mansour recalls:

Our original home [before 1948] was near the sea, the waves would reach its windows … this house was demolished during the war, so we moved to a house owned by our relatives, but they [the authorities] said ‘you are a small family,’ so they allowed us to use only two rooms of the house.

Mansour’s family was therefore forced to share the house with two others—in this case, with an immigrant Bulgarian Jewish family and an “Arab criminal” family. Similarly, Nader recalled: “in my fathers’ house a [Jewish] Turkish family was brought in; we had a shared kitchen. When they brought the Jewish family, we said nothing, we did not complain.” Evidently, to Nader, the housing conditions became more acute because of the “freezing policies”—the prohibition on maintenance and repair of the buildings. Expressions of helplessness around these “freezing” policies in Nader’s and others’ interviews reflect the experiences of “empty time,” the loss of control over time, and the closing-off of horizons. These feelings seem to have been accentuated as a result of the racial policies implemented by the state and the Municipality. In this regard, Nader recalled:

[T]here were protests organized by Maki [The Israel Communist Party – a supposedly Jewish-Arab party] for the Jews, calling for ‘an apartment in exchange for an apartment’ for the Jews not for the Arabs. … [T]he Jews wanted to leave because the houses were falling apart.

He added: “for the Jews – they created solutions, new neighborhoods on the borders of Jaffa. The Arabs had nowhere to go”. Hence, while being “neighbors,” sharing bathrooms and kitchens, the time experience of the Arabs and the Jews in Al-’Ajami was very different. Salwa, who was involved in various grassroots organizations, also recalls that, while the Jewish residents could leave for new neighborhoods, Arabs who could not bear the living conditions migrated abroad. She recounted:

It was a period in which the Jews were leaving, the Arabs were migrating, and the houses were falling apart. Amidar and the Municipality were driving the people out. It was a period in which you really wondered, who will stay in this city?

Regarding this period, Nader noted that many people received demolition orders. He recalled that “some people [Palestinians] left houses that they owned; or they were protected residents⁷ and were offered [by the state-appointed property management companies] apartments with monthly rent [outside Al-’Ajami].” Wardeh’s family was one of the families that were driven out. Wardeh is an activist in the Elected Islamic Association of Jaffa. She recounted how, in the 1970s, her family was forced to sign a document confirming that the building they resided in was hazardous, and hence they were moved out of Al-’Ajami, along with other families. However, she clarified—furiously—that “their aim was to give the place to the Jews, and evidently the house is still standing intact.”

Another major issue mentioned by all the interviewees concerned the shoreline of Al-’Ajami. Salwa recalled her memories as a child going to Al-’Ajami beach every evening with her mother and a group of young women. However, by the late 1960s, the shore was filled with rubble from the demolished buildings. She recalled: “dirt, grass, and thorns started to grow, it became dangerous, we stopped going there, it was as if we were forced to stop going there.” Thaira, a lawyer and activist who came with her family to Jaffa at the end of the 1970s, recalled her first impression of the neighborhood as unsafe, a place full of drugs, poorly-lit at night, and scary. To her, “the state succeeded in creating a sense of fear in order to persuade the residents to leave.” Thaira and other interviewees mentioned the lack of safety, noting that people were encouraged to take drugs to become eligible for welfare assistance. Similarly, Salwa referred to authorities’ hidden hand in the creation of the atmosphere of insecurity: “The police used to ignore drug dealing as long as it was among Arabs.”

2. Unfreezing time: Ways of coping

Despite the continuous “freezing policies,” all the interviewees marked the late 1970s and the 1980s as a shifting point, a time of revival, in which various initiatives, grassroots organizations, and impassioned struggles started. They mentioned the establishment of Al-Rabitah–The League for the Arabs of Jaffa, followed by the Elected Islamic Association of Jaffa, The Orthodox Club of Jaffa, the Yafa newspaper, the Women’s Committee, and the Youth committee. Salwa recalls the spirit of that time, quoting a statement made by a fellow activist that the situation could not continue like this indefinitely: “they [the authorities] won’t leave the place as a landfill for long, hence, there is a need for patience and endurance.” Such a logic is interesting, as it gives subjects caught in “waiting” mode a certain agency regarding their perception of time. Several interviewees claimed the situation was so bad that action and struggles had to happen. Mansour mentioned several external factors that helped prompt this development, such as the 1967 war, that is the open window it created onto the West Bank and Gaza and the accessibility of the Arab world in the international media (books, journalism, television) broke Jaffa’s isolation from its Arab milieu. In addition, he noted the fact that the Jews began moving out of Al-’Ajami (in the early 1970s), turning the place back into an “Arab neighborhood.” To Nader, the new conditions under the “freezing” policies “gave us a breathing space.” Moreover, as the waiting time prolonged, Wardeh noticed that the Palestinian residents in Jaffa, learning from the negative experiences of their Palestinian ex-neighbors who were forcefully relocated outside Al-’Ajami, refused to leave their hazardous houses. The interviewees’ descriptions of “turning the place back,” “breathing space,” and waiting as a positive learning period, disturb both notions of chronological linear temporality and empty time. Moreover, the narratives of the interviewees reveal how time and waiting became a tool for the community to create frames of activism and gain in awareness and knowledge. The analysis of these narratives produces different discourses of agency, layering between the political, the communal, and the personal.

2.1 Representations of collective political action

Thaira claimed that, while the early days of activism were characterized by social action, it became political. The interviewees discerned this development in the establishment of Al-Rabitah–The League for the Arabs of Jaffa, in the late 1970s. Its role evolved from the social activism of the youth committee into organized advocacy and direct action concerning various pressing issues, including the lack of education institutions, the decline of the shore area into a landfill site, and the continued demolition of the houses. One of Al-Rabitah’s most daring moves that was mentioned by the interviewees was its series of actions against the sealing-off of buildings labeled hazardous under the “freezing policy.” The action took both legal and practical forms: the “invasion” of the sealed houses, their repair, accommodating families in them, providing the necessary legal advice, and advocating their cases in front of the authorities. Referring to this struggle, Nader recalled:

When we established Al-Rabitah, there were many buildings which were emptied, had their bathrooms and kitchens destroyed and their windows and entrance sealed up with cement. Along with other organizations we acted, we took 5 kg-hammers one night and broke into the empty buildings, we renovated the bathrooms and kitchens and let about 115 families in.

Thaira explained that, in addition to its significance for the families concerned, this ambitious action generated media coverage and was followed by protests and the recruitment of lawyers to defend the squatters. However, in her opinion, the authorities suppressed this struggle by taking temporary tactical action instead of providing essential solutions. For example, the alternative housing provided by the authorities for some families was inadequate for their needs and the project was poorly planned and constructed; “it lacked public space and was overcrowded … which [meant it] soon turned into slum.” The repression of the struggles, Salwa claimed, was a common reaction of the authorities. She cited instances, as did other interviewees, of local activists who were “bought off” by the state, enticed by offers of employment in official institutions, and of communal initiatives that were thwarted or weakened by the establishment of parallel state-sponsored projects. Such targeted grassroots initiatives included the Yafa newspaper, Communal Kindergartens, and the Women’s Committee.

As regards the authorities’ reaction, the interviewees seemed to differ in their respective interpretations of the outcomes of their struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, as “successes” or as merely challenges that had no effect on the final course of the initial plan. However, they all agreed that the many struggles created a sense of belonging among the Jaffians, of collective memory and a shared experience, which, arguably, is beyond the mode of empty waiting time. Moreover, from a passive role, the Palestinian residents of Jaffa turned into initiators to whom the authorities had to respond in order to maintain the status quo. Activist groups effectively turned various aspects of public life that were neglected by the City Council into arenas of protest. Areas of neglect included education, for example, but local activists established and ran the aforementioned communal kindergartens, and teachers initiated projects aimed at raising socio-political consciousness among students, and the neighborhoods were maintained by volunteer camps that helped clear away ruins and debris to turn demolished sites into public gardens decorated with painted walls. All of these endeavors were accompanied by legal advocacy and formal objections to the Municipality’s acts. The residents’ transformation of their experience of time was reflected in an official report by the Department of Social Services of Tel Aviv Municipality (1984: 20), which warned of the potential ramifications of the ongoing policy of negligence in Al-’Ajami, describing the situation as a “time bomb.” The concept of “time bomb” strikingly contradicts the previous conceptualizations of “freezing” and the imposition of empty time. It shows that the state failed to foresee the consequences of its policies. Freezing might not only lead to empty time, but it can also lay the foundation for community-building, organization, and resistance, thus establishing alternative temporalities. Interestingly, although time had been used all along as a violent means by the municipality, euphemistic vocabulary such as freezing had been employed. Only when the residents regained control over time, the municipality opted to highlight the plausible violent consequences of its policies. Accordingly, potential violence is attached to a Palestinian agency and thus calling for a change of the methods of control.

However, in the present case, the collective political activism receded in the 1990s. The interviewees’ interpretations concerning this trend differed remarkably. For Mansour, it was a direct effect of Israel’s economic shift to neoliberalism as well as the Oslo Agreement with the Palestinian Authority, which, according to him, led to the privatization of the refugees’ houses and “ … changed the rules of the game. Anyone who could afford it could purchase a house in Jaffa … especially as, in the beginning, the properties were offered relatively cheaply, due to the city council’s neglect of the neighborhood.” Nader perceived the drift in political activism as an outcome of Al-Rabitah’s increased preoccupation with providing services, such as schooling and kindergartens, instead of engaging in advocacy. To him, “it was wrong to think of replacing the Municipality.” Thaira, however, argued that the political activism in the past decades was merely a reaction to a certain stage of the Municipality’s plan regarding Al-’Ajami, namely the stage of negligence and freezing. As the authorities moved on to the next stage—the renovation of the neighborhood to attract well-off Jewish residents—it succeeded in enticing local activists and professionals onto the City Council’s Jaffa forum, and away from their grassroots activism. Nevertheless, all the interviewees emphasized the radical transformation of Jaffa, physically and community-wise: the appearance of gated communities, the transformation of the landfill site into a promenade connecting the city to Tel Aviv shore to the north, the renovation of the infrastructure, the development of new buildings, and the increase in the numbers of wealthy Jewish residents.

2.2 Representations of collective communal action

Political fora featured heavily during the late 1970s and the 1980s; however, communal groups, especially religious associations, were mentioned by the various interviewees as being active before and after the 1980s. Nonetheless, we should bear in mind that there is no clear distinction between these two types of organization, particularly given that communal affiliations had political consequences. Salwa’s first memories of participating in a demonstration were from the early 1970s, when she and her classmates joined a protest against the City Council’s refusal to grant licenses for commercial premises pertaining to young Palestinian tenants on Maronite Church land. She also recalled her activism within various religious fora, including some she did not belong to. However, the main communal action stories appearing in the narratives of the interviewees referred to the last couple of decades. Wardeh proudly talked about her activism in the Elected Islamic Association of Jaffa, the expansion of the association over the last 20 years, and her success in encouraging other women to join her and participate in the decision-making fora. Moreover, while most of the interviewees defined the youth of today as apolitical, Wardeh described them as highly motivated and accounting for the majority among the decision-makers in the Islamic Association, whose main goal is “to preserve the holy sites and to hinder the Judaization of the city” through legal advocacy and awareness-raising events.

Referring to the last decade, Mansour described a different kind of achievement—that of the Orthodox Association of Jaffa. Thanks to the efforts of this organization, rental contracts for the church’s properties that were managed by a Jewish company were discontinued, and the properties were repaired and let to young Palestinian entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the income generated from the rent “is used for the benefit of the community.” Referring to the reasons behind this transformation in the last decade, Mansour explained:

In the past, those who made the decisions were loyal to the authorities. Then, its [the Orthodox Association] main activity was the scouts’ movement. Today it is run as a business, therefore the situation has improved. Nowadays, our Association is one of the richest organizations in Israel in terms of property.

Both Wardeh and Mansour described changes in the religious associations that have enhanced their social significance. In the case of the Orthodox Association, it has adopted neoliberal principles. In contrast to these views, Nader conceived the evolution of the religious organizations in a rather negative light:

Today, the youth perceive the future differently, they do not feel the approaching dangers or maybe they have less affinity to their people. The religious identities have become stronger than the nationalist one. In our days, we were more open to each other, but nowadays with these sectarian identities the society has become a closed one.

2.3 Articulations of personal initiatives

Weaving through initiatives of collective action, the narratives of the interviewees disclose stories of personal ways of surviving the freezing time and coping with its challenges. Mansour and Nader described how their families, similar to other Jaffian residents, “illegally” expanded their houses by annexing adjacent spaces (rooms and yards), which belonged to houses deserted by their Jewish neighbors who left Al-’Ajami. They and Thaira also described how they annexed lands created by the demolition of adjacent buildings, and their efforts to purchase them. A different mode of personal initiative was adopted by some individuals, who took upon themselves the task of “cleaning Jaffa of criminals and collaborators.” According to several interviewees, these individuals went as far as using violence to carry out the work.

Such stories of personal initiatives have prevailed mainly since the 1990s. Mansour explained: “when they [the Development Authority] began selling [the refugees’ houses], those who purchased houses in the first few years became rich, as the prices of the properties skyrocketed.” In addition to the privatization of the refugees’ houses, the urban plans of the 1990s created opportunities to repair run-down properties in collaboration with real estate companies, and even generate profit by letting them. Jiryis, a senior activist, takes pride in his purchase of the house in which his family has lived since 1948. Not only did he buy it from Amidar, but, in an act of ethical restitution, he also paid the original Palestinian owner (who is a refugee) for his share in the house. According to Israeli law, as a Palestinian and a refugee, this owner has no rights in the property. To Jiryis’ mind, this was an act of “freeing” the house from Israeli state control. Within the same plot, he built a multi-story building which he lets on the open market. His account is interesting in that it combines a nationalist view regarding the refugee’s rights along with profit-making. According to Mansour, such a combination is the “only way for Palestinians to continue living in Jaffa.”

3. From “freezing” to acceleration

Jiryis’ story of purchasing the house in which he lives, once the “freezing” policies ended, is uncommon. As we will see, the liberalization of the economy, which embodied an acceleration of transactions and time, created new conditions that also impeded the residents’ attempts to purchase houses and keep their community. Mansour maintained that the economic liberalization has also had an additional social implication: it created a considerable wealth gap between those residents who now own a high-value property and those who are stuck in poorly maintained houses managed by Amidar. Furthermore, he claims that this has also affected the social dynamics, as collaboration with the authorities no longer pays-off. All the same, most of the interviewees conceive these opportunities created by the selling of the refuges’ houses in the open market as falling short of providing a comprehensive solution to the housing crisis. High property prices, along with the imbalance between supply and demand, are now compelling many families to sell their houses in Jaffa and buy several apartments outside the city. Wardeh described the situation as follows: “Jews buy houses in Jaffa because they can afford it and we rent from them because this is all we can afford … but even the rent here is becoming very expensive for young people.” Meanwhile, Thaira anticipates that, eventually, “no Arabs will be left in Jaffa, maybe only few who are wealthy.” Other interviewees described how in the last few decades increasing numbers of Jewish neighbors have arrived. Several interviewees also linked Jaffa’s transformation to “a larger problem, of Judaization of Arab urban spaces, which is not limited to Jaffa.” Referring to this issue, Wardeh spoke in frustration:

Jaffa’s situation is like other places, like Acre and Lydda. The settlers invaded our space. Nowadays, the settlers carry guns freely and boldly walk among us and among our children … In the house behind us, 150 people live there. To a 240-square-meter house, they added an underground floor and closed the balconies to turn them into rooms. They go to study at religious schools they created inside Al-’Ajami, at the heart of Al-’Ajami.

The frustration of Wardeh and others at the current situation is also directed at wider society, which they argue is becoming “individualistic” and “materialist.” Three of the interviewees spoke about their children who are interested mainly in accumulating wealth. “We are becoming a ‘hollow society’” Thaira concluded.

4. Reclaiming time

Although uncertain about their children’s future in Jaffa, many remained optimistic. Wardeh, for example, claimed: “we own the future, we decide what will happen to us … if each one of us leaves, who will stay?”. The notion of “owning the future” reflects the lesson learnt form past experiences regarding the importance of control over time as an ingredient of struggle over the future of the community. Meanwhile, Nader believes the long years of activism made the existence of a Palestinian community in Jaffa a fact of life, which the authorities cannot dismiss, adding: “just as realities gave rise to us [activist movements in the 1970s and 1980s], under compelling conditions they, too, [the young generation] will rise.” Thaira considers the current religious tide temporal and envisages a non-linear future including the return of a nationalist consciousness. As for Salwa, although less optimistic, she views the control over time through activities that will keep Jaffa’s past alive in the collective memory. Hence, she remarked:

I never forget, when walking on the promenade and open spaces in Jaffa, that these are built on the ruins of people’s houses, many of whom are refugees […] although it is very painful to reach such a state, [but] … it is time to think about how to keep the memory of Jaffa in a museum or a cultural institution.

Discussion and conclusion

For the Palestinian population of Jaffa who remained in the city after the 1948 War and became Israeli citizens, time was anything but linear. Being part of a scattered and defeated nation, they were confused, disoriented, and unable to know what to expect beyond the momentary present. During the 1948 War, they had been concentrated into a “state of exception” and had to endure the cruelties of the Military Regime established to manage their lives. Yet, as soon as this regime was revoked, many of them were forced to share their houses with Jewish immigrant families: “[They] said nothing, [they] did not complain.” A policy of “freezing” led to a rapid deterioration in the condition of the buildings and the infrastructure. The crumbling surroundings and the empty time enforced by the plan both had their impact on the consciousness of the residents. The majority endured hard lives devoid of hope, while some chose to collaborate with the state for the sake of small benefits. Yet, as Mountz (2011: 390) noted, waiting time was also actively experienced. Residents learned how to cope with their new “neighbors” and the authorities. The tipping point paradoxically occurred in the late 1970s, when the freezing plan seemed to be on the verge of realization, namely the eviction of the residents. New neighborhoods were built for the Jewish residents, the majority of whom happily moved out. And many Palestinians, too, began to migrate (primarily to Australia and Canada). The Arab neighborhoods seemed increasingly like a ghost town. Yet, the departure of the Jewish population along with the continuity of the “freezing” policies unexpectedly created “a breathing space” for the Palestinian residents. The time of their “agency-in-waiting” (to use Brun’s, 2015, concept) had arrived. They established a multitude of grassroots organizations, principally the Al-Rabitah, which actively engaged in squatting, “illegal invasions,” advocacy, and the provision of legal assistance to residents. Alongside these impulses, a sense of community, identity, and belonging crystalized.

The freezing policy ended in the early 1990s and a phase of privatization and neoliberal urban renewal began. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the rhythm of time accelerated and brought with it a new form of control over the residents’ time. Indeed, as Bourdieu (2000: 228) argued, the control of others’ time does not only take the form of delay but also of rushing and uncertainty. Overall, the residents of Jaffa found themselves again “out of time.” A few were able to purchase the houses in which they lived from the management companies, but the majority could not. The opening of the market to real estate companies, which began to promote Palestinian houses as authentic, along with the awarding of building permits to extremely wealthy Jewish individuals for areas that were cleared, rendered house ownership or even renting beyond the reach of most residents, particularly young couples.

The two expressions of control over residents’ time—first through an imposed empty time and later through sudden acceleration and uncertainty—follow the same rationale. Both time rhythms are premised on the deprivation of normalcy to the city’s Palestinians citizens. Yet, while the imposed “empty time” led eventually to community-building, the “accelerated time” threatens to create a “hollow community.” The arrival of neoliberalism has been accompanied by its various syndromes: individualism, widening of socioeconomic gaps, materialism, and sectarian identification. Yet, beneath these currents, one should look at what Rifkin (2017) called “temporal orientation”: how natives look at their places and how these places are being transformed. Such a “temporal orientation” might explain the historical perspectives through which Jaffa’s residents view their city’s future; their experience of imposed temporalities brought them to realize the non-linearity of time and the existence of gaps and opportunities in which they can act and influence their lives. Most importantly, it gave them the opportunity to create sense of community and alternative temporalities that incorporate their understanding of their collective memory and identity—a legacy that might aid them in counteracting the various forms of imposed temporalities of displacement.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express her thanks to the interviewees for their readiness to share with her their thoughts and feelings, the special issue editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Yara Sa’di-Ibraheem

Notes

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