Wadi Salib

Wadi Salib (Arabic: وادي صليب, Hebrew: ואדי סאליב; lit. Valley of the Cross) is a neighbourhood located in downtown Haifa, Israel, on the lower northeastern slope of Mount Carmel, between the Hadar HaCarmel and the city's historic center and CBD.

History

Wadi Salib was established near the old city walls in 1761, shortly after modern Haifa had been established by Zahir al-Umar. The neighborhood was populated by Muslim and Christian Arabs until the mid-nineteenth century, when development in Haifa began pushing outwards to other parts of the city.[1]

After the arrival of Jewish residents in early 20th century, Wadi Salib and nearby Wadi Nisnas remained the important Arab neighborhoods in Haifa. In the 1930s and 1940s, both were sites of numerous riots over British rule and increased Jewish immigration to British Mandate Palestine.[1]

After the battle of Haifa during the 1948 Palestine war, 60,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from the city and few were permitted to return to their homes in Wadi Salib and other areas. Most of the buildings of Wadi Salib that had belonged to Palestinian refugees and internally displaced Palestinians were confiscated under the Absentee Property Law.[1][2] The 3,000 Arabs remaining in the city, circa 8.5% of the total urban population of 268,000 previously living in Haifa,[3] were largely concentrated in the nearby neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas.[1]

Between May 1948 and March 1949, about 24,000 immigrants, primarily Mizrachi Jews and survivors of the Holocaust, were settled in the former Arab quarters of Wadi Salib. Moroccan Jews were soon to follow.[3]

Wadi Salib riots

Main article: Wadi Salib riots

On the evening of 8 July 1959, a Mizrahi Jewish resident of Wadi Salib was shot and wounded by police in the course of a brawl. The next day, hundreds of residents marched in what was to become the first of a series of violent demonstrations against the government, the Labor Party and the Histadrut around the country.[4]

The riots in Wadi Salib awakened public awareness in Israel of the economic distress suffered by Jewish immigrants from the Arab countries. Newspapers of the time referred to the rioting as the "Moroccans' revolt."[4] Arabs who moved back to Wadi Salib did not receive permits to build or renovate and the neighborhood became a slum.[1] Yfaat Weiss of University of Haifa notes that "in the consciousness of the Israeli public, these Moroccan Jews and their history are associated with Wadi Salib, not the original Arab inhabitants."[3]

In the wake of the riot, Ben Gurion appointed an education committee to draw up programs for the advancement of high school students from Arab and Muslim lands.

In the decade following the riots the Israeli government evacuated and relocated many of the residents of Wadi Salib. Most of the neighborhood's buildings were subsequently destroyed during the 1960s.[5][6][7][8]

Today

Many residents of Wadi Salib, Jews and Arabs, are considered squatters and have been gradually evicted over the years. Some historic buildings are being renovated and turned into nightclubs and theaters. One is the Palace of the Pasha, built in Ottoman times. Adjacent is a Turkish bathhouse once used by local families. A building now occupied by an army veterans group was once an Oriental club that brought in musicians and dancers from Cairo.[1]

The old Muslim cemetery in Wadi Salib has partially been uprooted and split in half to make way for a highway between Haifa and Nazareth, though the Istiklal mosque still operates in Wadi Salib.[1]

Development plans

The Haifa Economic Corporation Ltd., is implementing plans to develop two 1,000 square meter lots to create "a site for office and commercial use that accentuates size and is inspired by the spirit and ambiance of the place including Turkish and Arab construction elements." On their website, they note that "Wadi Salib in general and this initiative in particular are located in proximity to the new government center including the court house hall, Israel Land Administration building, and additional government offices."

The current project is controversial due to the eviction of the last remaining families from the neighborhood, and the planned demolition of buildings including the former home of Palestinian intellectual Emil Touma. Another government center built in the same area in the early 1990s - in which many historic buildings were demolished - failed to boost the economy as expected. In the new plan, a few of Wadi Salib's remaining buildings will be renovated; however the rest will be destroyed.[1]

Notable residents

  • Eli Ohana (born 1964), football player and manager

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Am Johal (18 August 2004). "Sifting Through the Ruins: Historic Wadi Salib Under Pressure". Media Monitors Network. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021.
  2. ^ Yerushalmi, Dorit (July 2023). "How Does Khashabi Theatre Produce a 'Dual Presence' of Palestinian Urbanism? Ghosts and Memory in Its First Season, Haifa, 2015–2016". Theatre Research International. 48 (2): 123–141. doi:10.1017/S0307883323000044. Any Palestinian homes that were still standing were quickly deemed to be abandoned state-owned property. Within a few months, and with the municipality's encouragement, Jews (mostly immigrants from North Africa) replaced the Palestinian residents of Wadi Salib.
  3. ^ a b c Yfaat Weiss, "Invisible Cities. Wadi Salib, an Israeli Political Metaphor" 2003, IFK
  4. ^ a b So much for the melting pot Archived 2020-08-08 at the Wayback Machine, Tom Segev
  5. ^ Schwake, Gabriel (May 2018). "Post-traumatic urbanism: Repressing Manshiya and Wadi Salib". Cities. 75: 50–58. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2017.12.016. The governmental inquiry regarding the events of 1959 concluded that the neighborhood of Wadi Salib was not suitable for residential use, and in order to prevent future uprisings it should be evacuated and deconstructed (Weiss, 2011). The evacuation and deconstruction of the neighborhood houses began as soon as 1962, led by Shikmona, a municipal company in charge of urban redevelopment, became in charge of the operation (Weiss, 2011). In the following decade the vast majority of the neighborhoods' houses were demolished, while only several large ones were kept, mainly due to their size (Weiss, 2011). The majority of the neighborhood's land was regarded as absentees' property, and therefore publicly managed (Weiss, 2011; Berger, 1998).
  6. ^ Yerushalmi, Dorit (July 2023). "How Does Khashabi Theatre Produce a 'Dual Presence' of Palestinian Urbanism? Ghosts and Memory in Its First Season, Haifa, 2015–2016". Theatre Research International. 48 (2): 123–141. doi:10.1017/S0307883323000044.
  7. ^ Yerushalmi, Dorit (July 2023). "How Does Khashabi Theatre Produce a 'Dual Presence' of Palestinian Urbanism? Ghosts and Memory in Its First Season, Haifa, 2015–2016". Theatre Research International. 48 (2): 123–141. doi:10.1017/S0307883323000044. In the summer of 1959 hundreds of the neighbourhood's residents, fed up with living in abysmal conditions in the abandoned and crumbling homes with no infrastructure, staged violent demonstrations in the streets of the well-to-do Hadar HaCarmel neighbourhood. In their fury at their continued neglect and deprivation by the authorities, they threw stones, blocked roads, set cars on fire, broke shop windows and looted stores. Their protests brought to public attention the egregious gap between the living conditions in the posh neighbourhoods of Haifa's upper slopes and the disgraceful living conditions in the lower town. They prompted the mayor at the time to accelerate the relocation of all residents of Wadi Salib to apartment buildings in established Jewish neighbourhoods. [...] By the end of this ten-year process, the neighbourhood had been entirely cleared. Many homes were demolished; others were sealed up to prevent squatting, abandoned and exposed to the ravages of time and vandalism.
  8. ^ Weiss, Yfaat (2011). A Confiscated Memory. doi:10.7312/weis15226. ISBN 978-0-231-52626-5. The evacuation of Wadi Salib was one stage of an overall operation aimed at eliminating Israel's slums. It was among those neighborhoods of 'abandoned property' diagnosed as having 'primitive and even rickety structures.' Its status was identical to that of other neighborhoods slated for evacuation: neighborhoods in Jaffa, Kfar Shalem, and al-Shaykh Muwannis. The general decision to evacuate Haifa's slums was made by the Housing Ministry together with the municipality in the early 1960s. The order of priority regarding 'evacuation and demolition of the underprivileged areas' was headed by the Shemen area, followed by Wadi Salib up to and including Hamagenim Street and, lastly, Ard Yahud.

Further reading

Panoramic view of the neighbourhood from Ibn Gabirol street, with Government Campus at far centre

32°48′40″N 35°0′0″E / 32.81111°N 35.00000°E / 32.81111; 35.00000

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