Mixed cities explained

In Israel, the mixed cities (Hebrew: ערים מעורבות|translit='arim me'oravot, Arabic: المدن المختلطة|translit=al-mudun al-mukhtalita) or mixed towns are the eight cities with a significant number of both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. The eight mixed Jewish-Arab cities, defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics as those with more than 10% of the population registered as "Arabs" and more than 10% of the population registered as "Jews", include the following seven Israeli cities: Haifa, Lod, Ramle, Jaffa (now a part of Tel Aviv), Acre, Nof HaGalil (formerly Nazareth Illit), and Ma'alot Tarshiha.[1] Approximately 10% of the Arab citizens of Israel live in these seven cities.[2] The eighth city is Jerusalem, in which the Arab part of the city, East Jerusalem, has been annexed by Israel but is not recognized as such under international law.

The term "mixed cities" should not be confused with multicultural cities, nor understood to necessarily imply social integration. The eight mixed cities are the main places in which Jews and Arabs encounter each other, and very limited population mixing exists in Israel outside of these eight cities. As a result the topic has attracted significant scholarly focus over many years, and since the Second Intifada (2000–2005) it became the crux of social science scholarship in Israel.

History

In the early 19th century, only Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias had small yet significant minority Jewish populations living alongside the majority Arabs. These populations grew to become about half the cities' populations by the start of the British Mandate. Immigration and settlement also took place on the outskirts of the cities of Jaffa (these outskirts later became known as Tel Aviv) and Haifa during the same period. As a result of the Palestinian expulsions and fleeing of violence during 1948, Safed and Tiberias were depopulated of all Palestinian Arabs and became exclusively Jewish, whilst Jerusalem was split into Jewish West Jerusalem and Palestinian Arab East Jerusalem. Of those "original" mixed cities, only Haifa remained mixed after the war. However, after 1948 only about 3,000 of its 70,000 Palestinian Arab residents remained in Haifa; these remaining Palestinian Arabs were then moved into small areas of the city by the new Israeli authorities.[3] Today, about 12% of Haifa's residents are Palestinian Arab.

Ramla, Lod, Jaffa and Acre became mixed as a result of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. These cities had almost 100% Palestinian Arab populations prior to 1948, but after the war only about 1,000 Palestinian Arabs remained in Ramla and Lod, and 13,000 in Acre, mostly in the poorest segments of society and initially restricted to segregated compounds under Israeli martial law.[3] Internally displaced Palestinians from other areas moved to the cities in subsequent decades; today Palestinian Arabs account for 30% of Lod's population, 25% of Ramle's, 30% of Acre's, and 5% of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

The unique cities of Nof Hagalil and Ma'alot-Tarshiha became mixed through Israeli Arab influx and a municipal merger, respectively. In Nof Hagalil, the population is almost 30% Arab, but the municipality has refused to allow the building of any churches, mosques or Arabic-speaking schools.[4] [5] [6]

Integration

The term "mixed cities" should not be confused with multicultural cities, nor understood to necessarily imply social integration.[7] Yara Hawari describes significant geographical segregation and social exclusion within each of the eight cities, which contradicts "Israel's self-image as a pluralist and democratic society" and the "narrative of continuous historical coexistence".[8] Most Arabs in mixed cities live in predominantly Arab neighborhoods, and studies have shown significant inequality in municipal resource allocation, and wide socio-economic gaps in welfare, housing and education between the two communities. According to the New York Times, even towns "portrayed as models of peaceful coexistence fester with resentments born of double standards."[9]

In October 2021, following the May 2021 racial riots centered in the mixed cities,[10] the Israeli government approved a new five-year plan aimed at reducing years of state neglect of the inequalities between Jewish and Arab citizens, with an emphasis on addressing Israel's mixed city problems.[11]

Demographics

Mixed cities

PercentagesPopulation[12] Index of dissimilarity[13]
Ottoman SyriaMandatory PalestineIsrael
1872[14] 1922[15] 1945[16] 1951[17] 1990Current
JewsArabsJews and OthersArabsJewsArabsJewsArabsJewsArabsJews and others Arabs Jews and others Arabs Total
Current Mixed Cities
Jerusalem (including occupied East Jerusalem)26%74%55%45%62%38%n.a.n.a.72%28%61% 39% 584,352 366,797 951,149 96%
Jaffa0%100%42%58%30%70%98%2%96%4%63% 37% 29,000 17,000 46,000 82% (Tel Aviv-Yafo)
Acre1%99%3%97%0.4%99.6%73%27%77%23%67% 33% 33,331 16,171 49,502 2%
Nof HaGalil (formerly Nazareth Illit)n.a.n.a.n.a.n.a.n.a.n.a.n.a.n.a.70% 30% 29,209 12,730 41,939 25%
Lod0%100%0.1%99.9%0.1%99.9%93%7%79%21%70% 30% 56,789 24,142 80,931 73%
Ramla0%100%0.5%99.5%0%100%89%11%83%17%76% 24% 58,292 18,694 76,986 71%
Ma'alot-Tarshiha0%100%0%100%0%100%0%100%78% 22% 17,251 4,870 22,121 79%
2%98%26%74%55%45%95%5%91%9%88% 12% 249,773 33,963 283,736 74%
Historical Mixed Cities
Safed48%52%34%66%20%80%100%0%98%2%36,69278137,473n.a.
Tiberias64%36%64%36%54%46%100%0%98%2%45,98171746,698n.a.

Other mixed areas

According to publicist Afif Abu Much, the eight mixed cities are the main places in Israel in which Jews and Arabs encounter each other, and very limited population mixing exists outside of these eight cities.[18]

According to Ha'aretz in 2015, only 16,000 Arabs are thought to be living in the 16 localities not officially defined as mixed cities, or in Jewish neighborhoods of Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.[19] According to the 2020 population statistics the vast majority of other Jewish- or Arab-majority localities in Israel have between 0% and 1% of the other population group. According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, the only sizeable exceptions are the Jewish majority cities of Eilat (5% Arab), Carmiel (4%), Qiryat Shemona (3%), Arad (3%), Beersheva (3%), Nahariyya (2%), Safed (2%) and Tiberias (2%), and the Arab-majority cities of Mi'elya (3% Jewish) and Jaljulye (2%).[20]

See also

Bibliography

General

Specific locations

Population data

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Topic: Mixed Cities in Israel . 20 June 2014. Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues.
  2. Web site: Topic: Mixed Cities in Israel . 20 June 2014. Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues.
  3. Rabinowitz . Dan . Monterescu . Daniel . RECONFIGURING THE "MIXED TOWN": URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS OF ETHNONATIONAL RELATIONS IN PALESTINE AND ISRAEL – International Journal of Middle East Studies . International Journal of Middle East Studies . 40 . 2 . 2008-05-01 . 1471-6380 . 10.1017/S0020743808080513 . 208–210 . 162633906 . The Palestinian quarters of Safad, Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, and West Jerusalem and the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem were in a state of sociological catastrophe, with no community to speak of to even bury the dead and mourn the old existence... By late 1949 only one of the five towns that had been effectively mixed on the eve of the war, namely, Haifa, still had a Palestinian contingent. Even there, however, the urban mix had been transformed beyond recognition. The 3,000 remaining Palestinians, now representing less than 5 percent of the original community, had been uprooted and forced to relocate to downtown Wadi Ninas... More relevant for our concerns here are Acre, Lydda, Ramle, and Jaffa, which, although exclusively Palestinian before the war of 1948, became predominantly Jewish mixed towns after. All of them had their residual Palestinian populations concentrated in bounded compounds, in one case (Jaffa) surrounded for a while by barbed wire. As late as the summer of 1949, all of these compounds were subjected to martial law..
  4. Book: Emmett, C.F. . Beyond the Basilica: Christians and Muslims in Nazareth . University of Chicago Press . 2012 . 978-0-226-92249-2 . University of Chicago Geography Research Papers . 162 . There are no churches or mosques in Upper Nazareth and there are no schools (other than a neighborhood kindergarten) in which Arabic is the major language . 2022-05-15.
  5. News: 2013-09-20 . High above Nazareth, an Israeli mayor wants to keep his city Jewish 'now and forever' . Washington Post . 2022-05-15.
  6. Book: Kraus . V. . Facing Barriers: Palestinian Women in a Jewish-Dominated Labor Market . Yonay . Y.P. . Cambridge University Press . 2018 . 978-1-108-24560-9 . 29 . 2022-05-15.

  7. "Israeli mixed cities, particularly after 1948, cannot be perceived as multi-cultural cities, a point poignantly reflected in the absence of this term in the indexes of the reviewed books. Although localities were divided between the culturally distinctive Jews and Arabs, the cities still did not bear the potential to become multi-cultural. This absence of a multi-cultural vision in Israeli mixed cities impinges on the concept of "right to the city." For example, Yacobi maintains that the Arab community in Lod does not enjoy freedom in the city—it lacks the legitimacy to maintain individual and collective identities and lifestyles, to take part in decision-making, and not to be excluded."

  8. Book: Hawari, Yara . Routledge Handbook on Middle East Cities . Taylor & Francis . 2019 . 978-1-317-23118-9 . H. Yacobi and M. Nasasra . 117 . Erasing memories of Palestine in settler-colonial urban space: the case of Haifa . This rejection of the "mixed city" notion by Johnny and others reflects the spatial reality on ground and the political and social marginalisation faced by the Palestinian community everywhere inside Israel... The narrative of continuous historical coexistence and a mixed present-day reality in Haifa serves to support Israel's self-image as a pluralist and democratic society. In addition to giving the settler-colonial reality legitimacy, the existence of mixed urban spaces leads many to assume that under the current structures of power, a shared life is possible. The reality, however, is a space in which both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews live mostly separately and with vastly different experiences. . https://books.google.com/books?id=d0agDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA117.
  9. Web site: Riots Shatter Veneer of Coexistence in Israel's Mixed Towns . The New York Times . 2021-08-01 . 2022-07-09. Roger. Cohen. Roger Cohen. A journey across several mixed Israeli towns and cities revealed the extent of this mutual incomprehension. Seventy-three years after Israel’s birth in the 1948 Independence War, in which hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were driven out at gunpoint, Jews and Arabs in Israel live side by side but largely blind to each others’ lives. Towns portrayed as models of peaceful coexistence fester with resentments born of double standards..
  10. News: Eichner . Itamar . Golditch . Haim . Israel approves NIS 30 billion for development of Arab sector . ynetnews . 2021-10-25 . 2022-07-08.
  11. Web site: Relations in mixed cities one year after May 2021 disturbances – comment . 2022-06-08 . The Jerusalem Post JPost.com . en-US.
  12. 2020 data from the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, except for Jaffa (included within Tel Aviv-Yafo in the CBS statistics) from Haaretz: Web site: Lior . Ilan . Tel Aviv to build affordable housing for Jaffa's Arab residents . Haaretz.com . 2011-02-28 . 2022-05-12.
  13. Web site: Assaf-Shapira . Yair . 2019-12-20 . Segregation and Dissimilarity . 2022-05-12 . Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research.
  14. Scholch, Alexander. "The Demographic Development of Palestine, 1850–1882." International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 17, no. 4, 1985, pp. 485–505. JSTOR, . Accessed 4 Jun. 2022.
  15. [1922 census of Palestine]
  16. [Commons:Category:Village Statistics, 1945]
  17. Kamen . Charles S. . After the Catastrophe I: The Arabs in Israel, 1948-51 . Middle Eastern Studies . Taylor & Francis, Ltd. . 23 . 4 . 1987 . 0026-3206 . 4283205 . 453–495 . 10.1080/00263208708700721 . 2023-05-20.
  18. Web site: The New Mixed Cities . Tel Aviv Review of Books . 2020-12-09 . Afif Abu Much . 2022-05-12.

  19. "Some 16,000 Arabs are estimated to be living in 16 cities not officially defined as mixed, or in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods of big cities such as Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv."

  20. [Israel Central Bureau of Statistics]

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