Reise nach Jaffa, die aelteste Stadt am Mittelmeer
Schon in der Geschichte Younes (Jonas), des 'unwilligen' Propheten spielt Jaffa eine bedeutende Rolle. In der Hoffnung, den Anordnungen Gottes zu entkommen, bestieg er in Jaffa ein Schiff nach Tarchisch. Das Schiff geriet in einen Sturm und Prophet Younes landete im Wal. Ausserdem ist dies der Hafen, in den die Zedern des Libanon gefloesst wurden, ehe sie nach Jerusalem zum Bau des Tempels transportiert wurden. Der hasmonaeische Koenig Jonathan soll Jaffa im 2. Jahrhundert v. Chr. wiedererobert haben. Danach kam es unter die Kontrolle von Griechen, Roemern, Kreuzfahrern, Sarazenen und Ottomanen. Wenn Sie am Kai stehen und auf das Mittelmeer hinausschauen, koennen Sie den Andromeda-Felsen ausmachen, der in der griechischen Mythologie eine grosse Bedeutung hatte. Dort wurde Andromeda vom Meeresgott Poseidon gefangengehalten. Sie wartete darauf, geopfert zu werden, als ihr Geliebter Perseus, ausgeruestet mit den gefluegelten Sandalen des Hermes, herbeieilte, das Ungeheuer toetete und sie rettete. Im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert, gegen Ende der Ottomanenherrschaft und bevor Tel Aviv aus dem Boden schoss, gelangte Jaffa zu einer weitaus groesseren Bedeutung als heute. Mit 8.000 Arabern und 2.000 Juden war es die groesste Stadt an der Kueste zwischen Port Said im Sueden und Beirut im Norden. Damals war Jaffa der bedeutendste Seehafen und Handelsplatz von ganz Palaestina. Trotzdem war es eine Kleinstadt, als die ersten Zionisten aus Osteuropa an seinen Gestaden landeten. Manche Neuankoemmlinge waren bitterlich enttaeuscht. David Ben-Gurion, Israels erster Premierminister hatte mit 20 Jahren seine Heimat im zaristischen Polen verlassen, um nach Israel zu kommen. Er war entsetzt von die Arabische Stadt Jaffa!. Dies entsprach nicht seinem zionistischen Traum!. Obwohl er nach der anstrengenden, dreiwoechigen Reise erschoepft war, weigerte er sich, die Nacht hier zu verbringen und machte sich noch am selben Tag zu Fuss auf nach Petach Tikvah!.

Jaffa heute : Beginnen Sie Ihren Rundgang im Zentrum von Jaffa an der Ottomanische Turmuhr. Gegenueber ist die alte Ottomanische Polizei Station (Kishleh), und der Ottomanische Regierung Bau von 1897 Al-Saraya Al-Jadida, und der alte griechische-orthodox Bazar (Souk Al-Deir), und die alte Bustros (Negib Bustros) Strasse und der alte Iskandar Awad Bazar. Die direkt vor Ihnen liegende Mahmoudia Moschee (Aljamie Alkabier) stammt aus dem Jahre 1812. Im naheliegenden Flohmarkt (Souk Sala'hi) finden Sie Antiquitaeten und moderner Kitsch und alles weitere zum Stoebern.In entgegengesetzter Richtung liegt der restaurierte Teil Jaffas. Das Jaffa-Museum, das archaeologische Funde ausstellt, ist als Gebaeude viel interessanter als die Sammlung. Das Haus war Hauptquartier eines ottomanischen Gouverneurs im 18. Jahrhundert. Das grosse Bauwerk auf dem Jaffa Huegel (Tal Jaffa), das der Skyline von Jaffa Charakter verleiht, ist das Franziskanerkloster St. Peter. Das nahegelegene St. Louis Hospital wurde zu Ehren der franzoesischen Koenig Louis der neunte errichtet, der zwischen 1248-1254 hierher einen Kreuzzug fuehrte. Ein weiterer franzoesischer Herrscher, Napoleon, soll hier ausgeruht haben, nachdem er Jaffa in 1799 eingenommen hatte. Das Minarett gehoert zur Jameh Albahar-Moschee. Hinter dem Museum befindet sich eine Ottomanische Villa, komplett mit tuerkischem Bad, Nachtclub und Restaurant namens El-Hamam. Auf dem Huegel hinter dem Park folgt man dem Gewirr enger Gassen in ein Labyrinth von Ateliers, Galerien und Geschaeften. Die Kunst ist nicht billig, aber das Herumstoebern macht Spass. Auf der Pasteur Street erhebt sich ein Einkaufszentrum. Zurueck im Stadtzentrum, werden auf dem Hauptplatz einige Stuecke aus Oertlichen Ausgrabungen (Hellenistische,Roemer,Byzantische Perioden) gezeigt. Auf der anderen Strassenseite finden Nachteulen einige der aufregendsten Fisch Restaurants und Lokalitaeten der Stadt.

The Andromeda Sea Monster of Jaffa
The Romans loved sensational displays of natural curiosities. But the skeleton of the Sea monster of Jaffa surpassed all expectations for Marcus Aemilius Scaurus's extravagant victory celebrations in 58 BC. According to Greek myth, the hero Perseus had rescued the maiden Andromeda, who was chained to a rock and exposed to the monster at Joppa (Jaffa). The rescue was a favorite scene in Roman art. People said that the sea around Jaffa was still stained red with gore from the monster (Perseus petrified it with the Gorgon's head and smashed it with rocks). Traces of Andromeda's chains were pointed out to travelers on the promontory at Jaffa. The Andromeda Rocks can still be seen today from the seaport of Old Jaffa.
And now Scaurus had obtained the monster's skeleton. His men loaded the thing onto a huge grain transport ship sailing from Alexandria by way of Joppa to Rome. After a two-month voyage, the bone assemblage was unloaded at Rome's harbor at Ostia, hauled to Rome, and reassembled as the centerpiece of Scaurus's "marvels from Judaea." The ancient historian Pliny the Elder tells us that the backbone was 40 feet long (12 m) and 1.5 feet thick, with ribs taller than an Indian elephant. What kind of skeleton was billed as Andromeda's dragon? Most scholars believe that Scaurus must have shipped the bleached bones of a whale from Palestine. The huge proportions seem to suggest a cetacean. Jewish lore located Prophet Younes's (Jonas) whale at Jaffa, and sperm whales (up to 60 feet long) are known to beach on those shores. The immense "dragon" at near Beirut reported by the Roman historian Posidonius a few years earlier also sounds like a whale carcass. Nearly a plethrum long (100 feet), that carcass was so thick men on horseback couldn't see over it, and the jaws were wide enough to swallow a man on a horse. Other Roman writers described whale strandings in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Arabian Sea. In about 54 BC, the Romans staged a spectacular naval battle with a live whale that was trapped in Ostia harbor. And the emperor Septimius Severus (AD 193-211) once constructed a lifelike restoration of a whale skeleton in the Circus in Rome (fifty live bears were led inside the belly!).But the magical petrifaction of Andromeda's monster in the Greek myth raises the possibility that petrified skeletons of large extinct mammals might have influenced the Joppa lore, so it's worth mentioning that the impressive remains of proboscideans do exist in Palestine. The historian Josephus alluded to ancient Hebrew traditions about enormous bones dug up around Hebron, Palestine. In Jewish Antiquities (written for a Roman audience in the first century AD) he stated that the early Israelites had wiped out "a race of giants, who had bodies so large and countenances so entirely different from humans, that they were amazing to the sight and terrible to the hearing. These bones are still shown to this very day."

The City Map of Jaffa and Tel Aviv
City Map of Jaffa and Tel Aviv
Old Jaffa Hostel & Guest House
Old Jaffa Hostel & Guest House

The Silent Suffering of Jaffa's Arabs

by: Jens Brambusch and Nicholas Gibson

Once Jaffa was surrounded by fields of orange trees, making the Arab town popular all over the world. Nowadays Jaffa Oranges are just a product name. Costa, a Greek Orthodox Arab, who works as a volunteer for "The League for the Arabs in Jaffa" points sadly through the window of his office. Instead of the groves of orange trees there are clusters of grey, ugly houses with Israeli flags adorning the balconies.
Before 1948, 120,000 Palestinian Arabs were living in and around Jaffa, says Costa. "Jaffa was the centre of Palestinian life," he adds proudly. But during the first Arab-Israeli war most of the Palestinian inhabitants were expelled or simply fled in fear of further massacres like that in Deir Yassin. Just 4,000 people stayed. The houses of the refugees were "confiscated" by the Israel Lands Authority (Guardian of Absentee Property). Meanwhile the Lands Authority has handed over administration to a private company " of course it is Jewish. Today there are about 20,000 Palestinian Arabs living in Jaffa. Most of them do not in fact own the houses they are living in, even though they had belonged to their families for generations previously. Instead they have to pay rent to the Jewish "owners." An old woman, who was born in Jaffa, remembers the war in 1948. At that time, she says, the Palestinians were forced to share their houses with Jewish immigrants, who arrived at the port of Jaffa. "Even the bathroom was shared," she emphasizes. The port of Jaffa played a big role in Jewish history. Most of the Jews, who arrived between 1881 and the 1950s, entered Palestine through Jaffa. The old lady is upset. Her first son wanted to build his flat on the roof of his mother's house to live there with his wife, as is the Palestinian tradition. However, in the end her son had to move to a suburb of Tel Aviv to rent a flat. "We received no permission to build another floor, even though I am the owner of this house," she explains.
"Fifty-one years after 'al-Nakba' " the catastrophe, as the war of 1948 is known by the Arabs " the Palestinians in Jaffa face lots of problems," says Costa. In the last decades there have been a series of concerted attempts by the Jewish government and the municipality of Tel Aviv to expel the original population. In many cases they have succeeded. The old city of Jaffa is a popular tourist site with a surfeit of expensive restaurants and galleries " no Arabs are living here anymore, even the shops belong to Jews. In the past two decades, Jewish artists "discovered" Jaffa as their residence. For the young and the trendy, a place to live in Jaffa's winding streets has become a prerequisite of success, a sign of elite status. The result: the price of housing has rocketed. Palestinians, unable to pay the high rents, have been forced from Jaffa by economic pressure. "The Palestinians in Jaffa are living in a kind of ghetto," Costa says. There are just two neighborhoods for Arabs, the other parts are for Jews. In the 60s, he says, the municipality began a landfill site, known as the "Jaffa slope project," under which a large section of the coastline became a huge rubbish dump, with all the accompanying effects on the health of the residents. As the Palestinians left the area, the evacuated houses were sealed, on the pretext they constituted a public danger. Even though the Israeli High Court stopped that program, there are still plans to build expansive villas on the Jaffa seashore linking the swarming beaches of Tel Aviv and Bat Yam. "We are not allowed to live practising our own culture and our own traditions," Costa claims. For example, in both the kindergarten and in governmental schools Arab students are taught about Israeli history and educated in Jewish literature. "We are going to lose our identity," Costa says. "First they tried to expel us from our homes , now they try to destroy our culture." Most of the Arabs in Jaffa speak both Hebrew and Arabic. Almost all the signs in the city are written in Hebrew. Even menus in local restaurants are available only in Hebrew. The Arabs of Jaffa do not get any support from the Tel Aviv municipality, not surprising as only one seat out of 33 is held by an Arab. So the infrastructure in the Arab neighborhoods lacks the amenities available in the Jewish parts. Compared with Tel Aviv, of which Jaffa is technically a part, there are almost no public parks and just a few playgrounds. In recent years Jaffa has fallen victim to yet another difficulty " drugs. Arab clans have begun to fight each other. "The police just watches but does nothing," Costa says. Because of drugs the crime rate is increasing. Some families have thought about leaving Jaffa, because they don't want their children to face the problems associated with drugs. Most of the Palestinians in Jaffa are desperate. The unemployment rate is high. In fact, according to a survey done by the City of Tel Aviv, Arabs in Jaffa are at the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder. The Palestinians feel as though they have fallen between two chairs " outcasts from two communities. " In Israel we are treated like second class people, who suffer from discrimination. And even in the West Bank, where our relatives are living, we are not welcome, because we did not participate in their misery. In their eyes we are just the Palestinians who live an easy life in Israel," Costa explains.
In general Israeli politicians do not care about the interests of the Arab minority, nevertheless shortly before the elections, the streets of Jaffa changed appearance altogether with thousands of pictures and posters, as many as in Tel Aviv, lining the streets and walls as the political parties tried to attract the Arab voters. Most of the Palestinians support the Labour Party and their candidate Ehud Barak in the elections. Do they think there will be any changes in their living conditions, if Labour is ruling again? "I do not think so," Costa says with resignation, "but our situation cannot be any worse than now."
" The League for the Arab in Jaffa" was established in 1979 as a non-political, tax-free foundation, whose goal was to confront the social ills and provide the Arab community with a voice in public affairs. Its policies are directed by a board of nine elected members, who are voted in every two years. All Arab residents of Jaffa over the age of 18 are entitled to vote and to offer their candidacy for board membership. The members of the governing board of the league continued to volunteer their time and their skills in order to secure the existence of the Arab community in Jaffa. (Palestine Report 21/5/1999).


Arab Organizations in Jaffa:

Al-Rabita : The League for the Arabs of Jaffa was established in 1979 to serve the Arab community in the city. Rabita Club, 73 Yefet St., PO Box 41233, Jaffa. Tel: +972-368-12290, Fax: +972-368-27172, E-mail: rabita@netvision.net.il

The Islamic Council of Jaffa : 110 Yefet St., PO Box 41083, Jaffa. Tel: +972-36582661, Fax: +972-35076328. Director: Ahmad Balaba.
The Islamic Council of Jaffa was established in 1990 as an organization committed to positively serve the Arab population of Jaffa.
The Council's main goals include:
Preserving and caring for the Islamic holy places of Jaffa, including mosques and cemeteries; Changing the status of absentee‌ property under Israeli law, in order to allow the Islamic community to use their common and private property for community development and strengthening initiatives; Serving the Arab community of Jaffa in social and educational fields.
Planned activities of the Council include:
Beautification and renewal of the Tasou cemetery in Jaffa; Provision of scholarships for Arab students from Jaffa in higher education; Establishment of an educational complex (kindergarten, primary and secondary school, and a community center) in the mosque of Ajami, which will serve all the residents of Jaffa.