The Israeli movie Ajami was recently nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. This is not the first Israeli movie to be nominated for an Oscar. It is, however, a movie centred around the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa Tel-Aviv.
There are a number of interesting reviews of the movie. However, I thought that I'd jot down some notes about the movie, which is about my Israeli community. These are my people. The language in the movie is my own distinctive Palestinian dialect. Indeed, some of the actors in the movie are family members and the director Scandar Copti is related to me on my mothers side.
There are no spoilers here but simply some brief descriptions of the settings and context of the story. Hopefully this will help a few readers better appreciate Ajami.
I'm still not sure why Ajami reminds me of the recent film District 9. Unlike District 9 Ajami is about the marginalized made by the marginalized and its intended audience are the marginalized. The narrative is from the perspective of the marginalized. The language used is uncompromising. And the setting for me is dispiriting.
The Jaffa geto
Ajami is a contemporary story set in the Ajami Palestinian neighborhood of Jaffa in Tel-Aviv.
When Israel gained independence in 1948 most of the Arabs of Israel fled to refugee camps outside of Israel and through a sequence of laws they were prevented from returning to their homes. Much of Jaffa's Arab community now languishes in the refugee camps of Gaza. Most of Haifa's natives are imprisoned in the refugee camps of Lebanon.
Some families like my own, however, managed to remain in Israel. In Haifa and Jaffa these families were forced into Arab districts or reservations. The miniscule Palestinian community that remained Jaffa in 1948 did not fare as well as the small community that remained in Haifa. In 1948 the remaining Jaffawiyeh were herded out of their homes into a neighborhood called Ajami, which was surrounded by wire. Entry as well as exit was strictly restricted by the military.
Many people who were confined to Ajami lost their home in Jaffa city to the new immigrants who in turn came to Israel escaping the horrors of the European war. In 1948 the European immigrants, some obviously stunned by the presence of an ethnic community in their midst fenced with barbed wire and military observation posts, dubbed Ajami the Jaffa Ghetto. ha-geto.
A few decades ago the fence came down and the people imprisoned in Ajami were afforded the extensive rights guaranteed by citizenship in Israel. Ajami, however, remains an impoverished Palestinian community scarred by its history. To this day the Palestinians of Jaffa call their neighborhood the Ajami Ghetto. il-geto.
Impoverished and shunned
Ajami has fared worse than other Palestinian population centers in Israel. The difference with my own home town of Haifa is stark.
One of the main reasons for this is the overriding traditional ideology of segregation in Israel and policy makers' insistence on implementing this ideology even if it contradicts Israel's basic laws, which are effectively Israel's constitution.
Arabs are discouraged and regularly prevented, for instance, from buying lands designated for Jews (almost all land in Israel). They are encouraged and occasionally forced to live in Arab localities. I have well to do cousins who would be delighted to move their families from Arab Nazareth to one of the many villages designated for Jews only, especially the ones with great schools. But at present they can't do that and a number of Jewish and Arab legal advocacy groups are trying to end the era of segregation.
Though things are changing in Israel, at present Arabs live in Arab areas and Jews live in Jewish areas. They hardly interact with each other.
This policy of segregation matters less for Haifa Arabs than Jaffa and Ajami Arabs. Haifa has emerged as the cultural and commercial capital of the over a million Palestinians living in the Galilee. Jaffa, however, is almost alone as an Arab population center in central Israel. This is because in 1948 nearly all of central Israel was depopulated. Nearly every Arab village was destroyed and there was a deliberate policy to clear the lands between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem of its Arabs.
So the people of Ajami are stuck alone in Ajami. Nearly all of their traditional clans and tribes now live in refugee camps, many in Gaza.
No one to marry
One of the main difficulties of living separated from their traditional community groups is finding suitable partners for marriage.
While Druze Arabs of the Galilee regularly find marriage partners in the Syrian and Lebanese Arab Druze population centers and Jews can marry non-citizen Jews and bring them home into Israel, recent Israeli laws effectively ban marriage between Israeli Palestinians and Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Essentially, if an Israeli Arab wants to marry a non-citizen resident of the Israeli occupied territories he or she must move out of Israel. In tribal extended family environments leaving Israel is generally not an option.
These laws were introduced because of demographic fears in Israel that somehow marriage between Palestinian Israelis and non-citizen Palestinian residents of the land controlled by Israel will shift Israel's demographics.
The laws affect Jaffa Palestinians and more generally the Palestinians of central israel far more than they do the Palestinians of the Galilee. For the people of Ajami Jaffa their extended community lives in the refugee camps of Gaza.
So a sequence of laws and policies restrict Ajami residents to living in the Ajami Arab designated Ghetto and at the same time prevent them from marrying people from their own tribes. There is a feeling that policy makers in Israel don't want these people in their midst.
The language
Ajami is an Arabic movie. The language used in the movie is an uncompromising Jaffa and Ramleh dialect of Palestinian Arabic. More generally the dialect of coastal Palestine. It is the language that now dominates the refugee camps of north Gaza and southern Lebanon and the West Bank. It is the mother tongue of Ghassan Kanafani who narrated so well how Palestinian refugees were vilified by other Arabs for their distinct Arabic dialect.
Occasionally, the language is difficult to translate. Even into Hebrew. One of the great disappointments is the sanatized English translation of some of the harsh dialogue. For me Ajami is best watched with eyes closed and an ear to the beautiful Palestinian accent that is rarely heard outside the refugee camps and Arab slums, reserves, designated areas, towns and villages inside Israel.
Concluding notes
Ajami is art and not craft. It is Palestinian art crafted by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani.
For various reasons it reminds me of District 9. But it is a movie by Prawns about Prawns for Prawns.
For various other reasons I fear that Ajami will go the way of District Six. One day it could perhaps be designated a Jewish only area.
The movie seems to be available in full on youtube. I hope it wins the Oscar, that would be ever so encouraging for people working for Palestinian civil rights and human rights activists working to end discriminatory policies in Israel.