Palestine street, gorgeous story, gorgeous

Palestine street, gorgeous story, gorgeous
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Palestine Street

''Sixty years ago, Jaffa was the most prosperous, most cultured, most populous and most influential city in Palestine and part of a network of key Arab cities that stretched from Cairo to Damascus.

'A very special city' Shafiq al Hout was forced to flee Jaffa in 1948 In May 1948, most of its citizens fled the city in terror. In just a few days a community of 120,000 people was reduced to fewer than 4,000 as an almost undefended population fled the forces of the Zionist movement which were fighting to establish the state of Israel. This exodus was repeated all across Palestine.

In 1948 up to one million Palestinians became refugees, most of them escaping to neighbouring countries, never to see their homes again.

Palestinians refer to this enforced mass migration as 'al-Nakba' - the catastrophe. The city of Jaffa, known as Yapho in Hebrew and Yafa in Arabic, is also known as the Bride of Palestine. It was a city made of golden-coloured stone that sat for thousands of years looking over the eastern Mediterranean. Personal accounts Jaffa is now a down-at-heel suburb of Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city, but Palestinians' memories of their home before the events of 1948 refuse to be erased. The road known previously as Ajami Street runs like a spine through Jaffa People living in refugee camps abroad, who have not seen Jaffa since they were children, still sing its praises.

Like most places in the area, the name has changed in recent times from the Arabic Al Hilwe Street to Yefet Street, but many people still call it by its popular name, Ajami Street. Ajami Street runs like a spine through Jaffa, but it also runs like a spine through the story of the 'Nakba'. ''


Have a look on Anthony Sattini's review, about Adam LeBor book, City of Oranges, in Times -''A juicy history''-here

''A century ago, when LeBor’s narrative opens, Jaffa was a town of some 17,000 people, a typical Levantine melting pot where the majority Muslim community lived alongside Jews and Christians (the status quo might not have amounted to love, but was mostly tolerant). But in the Holy Land, in the 20th century, unholy struggle was never far away. Jaffa, “the Bride of Palestine”, became one of the main ports through which European Jewish immigrants arrived, many with little in their bags, but cherishing dreams of a better life. In 1909, a group of Jewish families broke out of Jaffa’s municipal grip and founded a settlement in the sands just to the north. They called it Ahuza Bayit. The development attracted an increasing number of settlers and grew into the place we now call Tel Aviv, a large, brash, lively, European-styled Jewish city with a Bauhaus flavour and a mixed accent. The offspring first eclipsed, then absorbed the old Arab port of Jaffa.''(Anthony Sattin, Times)


Friday September 12, 2008 - 10:28pm (EEST) Permanent Link