Battling against Israeli 'apartheid' By Lucy Ash, BBC news, northern Israel BBC News Online December 23, 2004 Adel Kaadan is standing by the side of a potholed road surrounded by puddles of sewage. "Can you smell it now?" he asks. "My children have to pass this way every day on their way to their classes. "When I took my eldest daughter for her first day at school I saw that the roof was stuffed with asbestos." We are walking around Baqa al-Gharbiyah, an Arab town in northern Israel about an hour's drive from Tel Aviv. As head nurse at a nearby hospital Mr Kaadan is well aware of the health risks in his hometown. But it is not just the rubbish, the asbestos and the sewage - the whole place reeks of neglect. In one neighbourhood the streets end abruptly with a wall of concrete and barbed wire - Baqa is sliced in half by Israel's new security fence. "There's nothing to do here - no cinemas, no swimming pool, hardly any sports facilities. So most young people either turn to Islamic fundamentalism or start taking drugs," says Mr Kaadan. It is not the kind of place he wants to raise his four daughters, aged four to 15, so for almost a decade he has been fighting for the right to move to a Jewish community a few miles away on heavily subsidised, state-owned land. His long battle is a protest against what he calls "Israel's apartheid". Cosmopolitan suburb Katzir is a gated suburban paradise, perched on a hilltop. It was set up in 1982 by the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency as a bulwark against the surrounding Israeli Arab villages in the valley below. Not everyone in the village is against me. It's the people in power who are acting like racists Adel Kaadan Resident Gila Levy takes me on a tour of the tidy streets and immaculate gardens filled with brightly coloured flowers. She boasts that Katzir is a cosmopolitan place and shows me dozens of new houses built by families from as far afield as Argentina and the former Soviet Union. Then she takes me to a spot with breathtaking views. "On a clear day you can see the Mediterranean and at night you can see the green lights and hear the calls to prayer from all the mosques down there," she says. "I like that. It gives this place a very special atmosphere". But although Gila is happy to live next to Arabs, she doesn't want them to share her community. She says many other residents feel the same way. 'Slap in the face' Adel Kaadan first heard about Katzir in 1995 after a Hebrew language newspaper advertised for new residents. "I went up there to find out more and at first people were friendly because they knew me from the hospital in Hadera - they were ex-patients of mine," he says. "But when they found out that I wanted to buy a plot of land, their behaviour changed. Some of them became very hostile. It felt like a slap in the face". At first the Katzir council simply dismissed Mr Kaadan as "socially unsuitable". When pressed on his reasons for opposing the application, Mayor Yacoov Armor says he doesn't believe that Mr Kaadan or his family really want to integrate with Jews. "Why would a Muslim want to observe Jewish holidays or send his children to our schools? He just wants to destroy our community by destroying our rules," he says. Mr Kaadan, a secular Muslim, insists he doesn't mind if his children observe Jewish customs and holidays so long as they get a decent education. At the moment his eldest daughter, Aya, spends three hours a day on a bus travelling to classes in the coastal city of Haifa. 'Discrimination' Dana Alexander of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel is backing Mr Kaadan's case. She says his battle to move to Katzir is a result of the collective discrimination that has been going on for decades against Arab municipalities and villages. Israeli Arabs lag behind Jews in everything from land allocation to education and employment prospects. But in 2000 the Supreme Court ruled that the Israeli Land Authority, which leased land to the Jewish Agency to establish Katzir as a Jewish-only community, had acted illegally. The authority did nothing hoping Mr Kaadan would just go away but after he filed for contempt of court, it finally caved in. This May it granted him his plot of land at 1995 prices - about $15,000 rather than $100,000. Dana Alexander calls this "a landmark ruling which proves that all citizens should enjoy equal rights in a democratic Jewish state". Foot dragging But the battle is not over. Earlier this month some members of the Knesset tried to introduce a new bill which would circumvent the Supreme Court verdict and once again allow for exclusively Jewish communities on state land. The bill was narrowly defeated and the former Justice Minister Tommy Lapid said he opposed it because "it smelled of apartheid". So on paper Mr Kaadan remains the winner. In practice though bureaucrats are dragging their feet. There is still no lease and he hasn't started building his house. He is now negotiating with Katzir's economic co-operation council on an additional development tax - that sounds like yet another delaying tactic. So does Mr Kaadan really want to take his family to a place where it seems they aren't welcome? "Not everyone in the village is against me," he says. "It's the people in power who are acting like racists. I will move there and my house will be open to both Jews and Arabs. It will be a model of co-existence. "Who knows? One day I might even become the mayor." http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/4111915.stm
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