The ghost of Manshia awakes

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.

http://ronen.dvarim.com/2007/10/15/the-ghost-of-manshia-awakes/

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