Modbert
Daydream Believer
- Sep 2, 2008
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Arab family denied right to rent home - The National Newspaper
Nevatim, Israel // The Zakai and Tarabin families should be a picture of happy coexistence across the ethnic divide, a model for others to emulate in Israel.
But Natalie and Weisman Zakai say the past three years since the Jewish couple offered to rent their home to Bedouin friends, Ahmed and Khalas Tarabin have been a living hell.
I have always loved Israel, said Mrs Zakai, 43. But to see the depth of the racism of our neighbours has made me question why we live in this country.
Three of the couples six dogs have been mysteriously poisoned; Mrs Zakais car has been sprayed with the words Arab lover and the windows smashed; her three children in school are regularly taunted and bullied by other pupils; and a collection of vintage cars in the familys yard has been set on fire in what police say was an arson attack.
To add to these indignities, the Zakais have spent three years and thousands of dollars battling through the courts against the elected officials of their community of Nevatim, in Israels southern Negev desert, who have said they are determined to keep the Tarabins from moving in.
Last week the Zakais legal struggle looked like it had run out of steam. The supreme court told the two families the Tarabins should submit to a vetting committee of local officials to assess their suitability a requirement that has never been made before by the Negev community in the case of a family seeking to rent a home.
Chances for Jews and Arabs to live together outside of a handful of cities are all but impossible because Israels rural communities are strictly segregated, said Alaa Mahajneh, a lawyer representing the Zakais.
Israel has nationalised 93 per cent of the countrys territory, confining most of its 1.3 million Arab citizens, one-fifth of the population, to 120 or so communities that existed at the time of the states creation in 1948.
Meanwhile, more than 700 rural communities, including Nevatim, have remained exclusively Jewish by requiring that anyone who wants to buy a home applies to local vetting committees, which have been used to weed out Arab applicants.
But Mr Mahajneh, from the Adalah legal centre for the Arab minority, noted that legal sanction for such segregation was supposed to have ended a decade ago, when the supreme court backed an Arab couple, the Kaadans, who had been barred by a committee from the community of Katzir in northern Israel.
Although the Kaadans were eventually allowed to move into Katzir, the case has had little wider effect.
In fact, Mr Mahajneh said, the decision in the Zakais case suggests were going backwards. The Kaadans won the right to buy a home in a Jewish community, whereas the Tarabin family were seeking only a short-term rental of the Zakaiss home.
Mrs Zakai said: If Jews were being denied the right to live somewhere, it would be a scandal, but because our friends are Arabs no one cares.
Every family that wants to buy or rent a property must first go through the committee. Fearful of the implications of the Kaadan ruling, Jewish communities in the Galilee unveiled a new approach to barring Arab applicants last year. They introduced bylaws amounting to loyalty oaths that require applicants to pledge to support Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land.