The ghost of Manshia awakes
smoking on Al_Yarmuk St.
During the Jewish Holiday of Sukkot (September, 2007) we marked out the grid of streets and houses of the Manshia Quarter with the help of soccer field marking equipment and simple paint rollers. The marking was done near the sea, on the border between present-day Tel Aviv and Jaffa. For a few weeks, the streets of the former neighborhood where marked on the Promenade and the grassy lawns of the Charles Clore Park. You can now stroll down Al-Yarmuk or Abu-Laban streets, sit down and watch the sun set on the corner of Irsheid and Hasan-Bek, have a picnic on the gardens of Al-Jauni street or play a game of football at the British police station.
The four days of marking where hard and hot, but also fascinating, moving and mind opening. We met many reside nts who lived in the quarter or near by and had an active relationship with the quarter inhabitants. Palestinians who live now in Jaffa and Ramle, whose families where forced to leave in 1947 and Jewish families who also left the area because the fighting. We held a fierce but intriguing argument with Etzel (Irgun) veterans, one of them fought and was wounded on the same roads we where now marking back in 1947. While working we talked to hundreds of people who demanded a explanation about what we where doing. We received a lot of encouragement and support from the audience and surprisingly little opposition. We heard great stories about life in the neighborhood, about the good but also very difficult relationship between Jews and Arabs, about the terrible expulsion of the Arabs in 1947 and the destruction of the houses, about the polish and Romanian holocaust survivors who arrived after the war to the destroyed neighborhood and moved into homes of strangers, and built a new life next to the sea, about the forced removal in the sixties, and the final destruction of the Manshia.
The Lines will eventually get erased and the streets of Manshia will disappear again under Charles Clore park, but with this small gesture of marking simple white lines we reached many people, raised important questions about our life in Israel/Palestine, awoke forgotten memories and participated in the changing of the historical and political consumption of our city.
pictures by Zsuzsa Katona
pictures by Michali Bar-Or
רוח הרפאים של שכונת מנשיה קמה לתחייה
בסוכות תשס”ח (2007), בעזרת עגלות סימון של מגרשי כדורגל ורולרים פשוטים של צביעה, סימנו את גריד הרחובות והבתים של שכונת מנשיה.
במשך כמה שבועות ייוותרו רחובותיה של השכונה מסומנים על הטיילת ועל הדשאים של גן צ’רלס קלור. אפשר להתהלך שוב ברחוב אל-יארמוק ואבו לאבאן, לשבת ולהתבונן בשקיעה בפינת אירשיד וחסן בק, לעשות מנגל בצדי רחוב אל-ג’אוני ולשחק כדורגל בתחנת המשטרה הבריטית.
ארבעת ימי הסימון היו קשים וחמים, והיו גם מרתקים, מרגשים ומרחיבי אופקים. פגשנו רבים שגרו בשכונה או בקרבתה: פלסטינים שגרים עכשיו ביפו וברמלה לאחר שמשפחותיהם נאלצו לעזוב את השכונה ב-1947, וגם יהודים שמשפחותיהם עזבו בגלל הקרבות. ניהלנו ויכוח קשה ומרתק עם ותיקי האצ”ל שהגיעו לאירוע, שאחד מהם נלחם ונפצע ב-1947 ברחובות שסימנו. דיברנו עם מאות אנשים שדרשו הסברים, ומהקהל קיבלנו הרבה עידוד ותמיכה – ולהפתעתי, רק מעט התנגדות. שמענו סיפורים נהדרים על החיים בשכונה, על שכנות טובה וקשה מאוד, על הגירוש הנורא של הערבים ב-1947 ועל הרס הבתים, על ניצולי השואה שהגיעו לאחר המלחמה לבתים הזרים של השכונה ההרוסה ובנו בה חיים חדשים ליד הים, על הפינוי הכפוי בשנות השישים ועל הריסתם הסופית והמוחלטת של בתי השכונה.
עוד זמן קצר הפסים ידהו ויימחו, ורחובות מנשיה ייעלמו שוב מתחת לפארק צ’רלס קלור. ובכל זאת, מחווה קטנה בקווים לבנים ופשוטים איפשרה לנו לגעת באנשים רבים, להעלות שאלות חיוניות לחיים שלנו פה, להעיר זיכרון נשכח ולהשתתף בשינוי חשוב של התפיסה ההיסטורית והפוליטית של העיר שלנו.
Ronen.
happened to bump into your flickr and saw all the photos of this project.
Very interesting project indeed, thought provoking and true to the nature of Tel Aviv and the country. Perhaps its hard to understand how important this work is if you have never been to Israel or to Tel Aviv. But I, who had lived there many years ago was moved by all these photos. The scar which is this barren area on the border of Tel Aviv and Jaffa always seemed so unforgiving, walking from neve-tzedek to the beach, and indeed, the more you think of it the more it seems like a scar which will never heal, even if the white markings on the grass have already disappeared. thank you.
Ronen
First of all to congratulate you on the Manshiya project, very important powerful and moving.
There is something though that bothers me, and this is the use of the street names. This repeats in many of Zochrot’s actions, and I find it problematic. I researched the naming of the streets during the British Mandate and I know that there was a wide gap between the names on the maps to people’s lived geographies. In some places people used different names, in others they didn’t use any names. In Arab psycho-geography street names are less important than urban features - it is a perception of the landscape less as a grid but more of localities. Less linear, cartesian, more space and people based… based more on familiarity and existed primarily in oral culture.
Street names were used by the British as an instrument of bureaucratic and political control - it made it easier for them to map Jews and Arabs, and of course to control individuals (send the police, tax them etc etc).
So by reviving street names you may actually be reviving British impositions on the landscape. In addition, you seem to suggest that there is a “true name” that can be re-written into the landscape. But isn’t this what Zionists did in various naming campaigns? The issue is not who is right, but whether the whole obsession with signposting is not part of the problem.
Having said that, I like your project much better than Zochrot’s yellow-and-white signs, as your writing was ephemeral.