Troublesome Salafi Neighbors in Jaffa: there Goes the Neighborhood………
“Jaffa is one of the few areas of Israel where Muslims and Jews have coexisted, albeit often uneasily, for decades. But the determination of an organisation of national-religious Jews to build a 20-apartment development, exclusively for subscribers to a rigidly Zionist ideology, is threatening to destabilise the delicate balance in this troubled area of Israel's main city, Tel Aviv. This week the high court in Jerusalem is set to rule on a case brought by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel claiming that the project discriminates against Arabs and non-religious Jews. The organisation behind the development, Bemuna, says it merely wants to create a religious community free from non-Jewish and secular influences. The activists fear the newcomers intend to impose their observances on the neighbourhood – such as a prohibition on driving cars on the Jewish sabbath. They blame the state of Israel for leasing the land to Bemuna in the full knowledge that it planned to build housing barred to locals…..”
As many Palestinians probably thought, perhaps in different terms, when the illegal settlers first started moving into the West Bank: "There goes the neighborhood...." This time many Jews, non religious Jews, will likely join them in saying the same thing. Has it occurred to anyone else, beside me, that the non-religious Israelis really want the religious kooks, the Jewish Salafis for that is exactly what they are, all to move to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and just leave the pre-1967 for them?
Cheers
mhg
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