Abstract
This article explores the extent to which describing Haifa as an oasis of coexistence is truth or myth. The discourse of the city’s municipal officials and public figures is analyzed to verify their experiences and perceptions of the city’s identity, especially the rising Palestinian urbanism, the allocation of municipal resources to permit equality in individual and communal life, and the institutional division of labor to allow for just representation and participation. This study is framed within theoretical models of tolerance, arguing that Haifa is characterized by an asymmetric tolerance formula, which is enabled by the unequal political strength of the Jewish and Arab elites of the city. To illustrate this argument, a thematic analysis of twenty-five in-depth interviews with leading city figures is introduced. The themes emerging from the interviews not only describe how tolerance is manifested but also explore its positive normative potentials, translated into the ability to challenge the marginalization that individuals or groups experience and support their political struggle for equality, on the one hand, and in fostering and managing inequalities, regulating prejudice and subordination, and masking domination and exclusion, on the other.
It is deeply rooted in the Israeli public discourse, including among Palestinian citizens, that Haifa is a good model of a “mixed city” characterized by tolerance and “shared life.” In the eyes of many, the common image of the city is of an oasis of mutual tolerance and understanding between Jews and Palestinians.1 This widespread perception has a solid foundation in reality, when comparing Haifa with other historically “mixed/divided” cities, such as Lidd (Lydda) and Akka (Acre).2 This is especially true during tense times, such as May 2021, when Palestinian dissent led to violence in many towns in Israel.3 Violence has been most brutal and tragic in cities in which Jewish and Arab populations share close spaces or the same neighborhoods, such as Lidd and Akka. In contrast, Haifa remained relatively calm during these events and despite a few unprecedented violent demonstrations, the city returned very quickly to its “normal” everyday life.4 One is therefore puzzled by the tremendous differences between Haifa and the other cities and the reasons behind its uniqueness. This article’s aim is to decode the puzzle of Haifa, seeking to verify the extent to which it is indeed a peaceful mixed city and whether there is congruence between image and reality. The motivation of this endeavor is empirical. However, given the presumption that cities have become the central life environment, the case of Haifa could take on immediate theoretical importance in three different ways. The first concerns exploring the political formula that enables Haifa to persist, in reality or image, as a unique mixed city in Israel. The second concerns the effort to decenter the state and address daily experiences of multiple citizenship in municipal spaces. The third complements this concern by shedding light on how the city could be a model city-state—a site of toleration and peaceful mutual coexistence, detached from state policies.5
There is a highly charged debate regarding what has been historically coined in Israel as “mixed cities.”6 Although this debate is not the focus of this article, it remains important to note that many scholars have criticized the use of this term, arguing that these cities are heavily dominated by the Jewish populations that marginalized the Arab inhabitants and pushed them into separate and segregated neighborhoods.7 Therefore, they prefer to call them binational cities, or “divided cities.”8 This naming derives from the fact that these cities were Palestinian with a solid Arab majority before the Nakba of 1948 and due to it became Jewish towns with a small Arab minority.9 Accordingly, most of the Arabs living in these cities were forcefully evacuated and became refugees.10 The remaining Arab population lived in ghettos, often in houses evacuated by other Palestinians, and thereby became internal refugees by state law.11 Many scholars still argue that settler colonial polices of the state remain dominant in these cities, including Haifa.12 This literature causes to wonder if it is Haifa’s image alone that makes it different from other mixed/divided cities or if something real exists leading many Palestinian residents to praise the city as the cultural capital of the Palestinian citizens of Israel.13 Given the fact that hundreds of Arabs immigrate to the city every year and the Jewish community has been relatively tolerant, one wonders, is Haifa a genuine oasis of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs?14 How do inhabitants of the city perceive this reality, how is it sustained, and what are the ethical reasons and causes at the basis of this unique phenomenon?
To answer these questions, the discourse of the city’s municipal officials and public figures is analyzed. Their experiences and the way they perceive the city’s identity are examined, particularly in relation to the rising Palestinian urbanism, the allocation of municipal resources to ensure equality in individual and communal life, and the institutional division of labor to allow for just representation and participation. For this purpose, the study is framed within theoretical models of tolerance. This choice is justified by the fact that tolerance is a prominent feature of the commonly held image of Haifa and in the public discourse. Its leaders present tolerance as a deep infrastructural dimension that makes Haifa unique, a liberal city in which diversity and mutual recognition coexist in the best form possible in Israel. Thus, it is argued that by shedding light on the city’s model of tolerance, the hegemonic political culture can be deconstructed, allowing for the determination of whether a gap exists between the image of tolerance and coexistence and the reality in which national hierarchies are sustained. This helps to avoid the public idealization and academic reification of the city and verify the accuracy of the argument of critical Arab citizens that the politics of liberal tolerance, defined as the willingness to live with something that one dislikes, forms a sophisticated ideology that does not stop short of overcoming the city’s hegemonic power structure. It permits the municipality to follow well-known patterns of colonization, fostering the physical control of Arab neighborhoods under the epistemological auspices of development and integration, without having to pay their economic and political price.15
Locating the study of the city within the literature on tolerance is also theoretical and epistemological. It allows to reveal the shortcomings and negative political and ethical ramifications of liberal tolerance and the extent to which it fosters the management of inequalities, the regulation of prejudice and subordination, and the containing of a political crisis capable of challenging the shallowness of liberal equality.16 Exploring Haifa allows to demonstrate how liberal tolerance secures the norms that bring tolerance into being in the first place, as an ideological tool masking a deeper reality of domination through which the majority exerts its hegemony without the price of ensuring consent or generating the kind of conflict that has occurred in other mixed/divided cities. Furthermore, exploring Haifa allows to investigate the extent to which its leadership has developed unique asymmetric power-sharing mechanisms that, while sustaining inequality, remain acceptable by the city’s elites—Jews and Palestinians—based on an undeclared political culture of imbalanced mutual toleration.
To illustrate the main arguments, a thematic analysis of twenty-five in-depth interviews with leading city figures is introduced. The themes emerging allow not only describe how tolerance is manifested but also explore its positive normative potentials, as translated into “its ability to challenge the marginalization that individuals or groups experience; and its ability to not just describe, but also support, political struggles.”17
Epistemological Framework
The social world is not a site of domination endured passively and unconsciously, but rather a human reality characterized by a multiplicity of disputes, critiques, disagreements, and cleavages.18 This understanding invites exploration and elaboration of the logic behind Haifa’s asymmetric tolerance formula, enabled by the unequal political strength of the Jewish and Arab elites of the city. In the following examination of tolerance, Brown’s perspective is adopted, viewing it as a core constituent in how hegemonic liberal elites conceive of their own position regarding national–cultural–religious difference.19 This is implemented by examining the type of order that liberal tolerance reflects and the practices it supports. As Brown argues, tolerance is implicated in the state’s regulatory operations to “contain political crisis . . . that threaten to reveal the shallow reach of liberal equality and the potentiality of liberal universality.”20 Therefore, it could serve as a successful device in the management of others and for the channeling of “liberal” aversion.
This understanding of tolerance challenges the tradition established by John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Tolerance from 1689 in which he praised tolerance as an indispensable tool to reconcile various ways of life and belief, guaranteeing the avoidance of violence.21 Locke’s conception of tolerance is a functional one, seeking to facilitate social peace in a disruptive time. As Jolley argues, tolerance for Locke means
a public policy that obliges governments to grant individuals and groups within their domains liberty to practice and profess their religion as they see fit so long as by doing so they do not infringe upon the liberty of others, jeopardize the social welfare, or presume to exercise civil power.22
Accordingly, it relates to instrumental public policy in maintaining civil peace. This understanding emphasizes the autonomous moral reasoning behind avoiding coercion when different ways of life and systems of values are in place. This theorization has been behind transforming toleration into an indispensable value that allows avoidance of violence in modern societies where constant and immediate encounter with otherness exists.23
Scholars have differentiated between tolerance, referring to attitudes, and toleration, referring to social or political practices.24 Toleration relates to the practice of not curtailing the freedom of others when their conduct is disapproved.25 Therefore, it is almost synonymous with negative or conditional freedom, the absence of constraint, and the allowance of various forms of dissent.26 The emphasis is placed on results rather than motivation. Notwithstanding, toleration is not indifference, passivity, or apathy.27 It entails a purposeful decision to tolerate and therefore does not ignore the motivations behind it. It is “a willingness to admit the possible validity of seemingly contradictory viewpoints, a hesitancy to pass value of ‘truth’ judgements on individuals or group beliefs.”28 This definition contains an ethical dimension that does not signify approval and is relativist regarding an assessment of truth or falsity. Accordingly, the opposite of tolerance is intolerance, rather than persecution or suppression.
Vogt politicizes the distinction between tolerance and toleration further, arguing that whereas tolerance is concerned with the interpersonal attitude of accepting things that one does not like, toleration is concerned with “governmental and other institutional policies and principles that limit discrimination and ban some restraint on individual’s liberties.”29 This differentiation clarifies the active role of social or political agents, despite their dislike of certain norms, avoiding actions that prevent others who believe them to be right from behaving according to them. Thus, toleration is a counteracting force against suppression and negative interference, allowing dissenting others, especially minorities, to live the life they want. As a result, it is promoted as a strategy to enhance multicultural justice and peaceful coexistence.30
Forst (2017) differentiates between two types of tolerance. Coexistence tolerance is pragmatic, accepting the way of life of others in order to avoid conflicts and maintain peaceful cohabitation.31 Respect tolerance is based on principle, holding the belief that all citizens are autonomous individuals whose dignity, rights, and civil liberties should be respected. When it comes to majority–minority relations, respect tolerance is based on principled solutions and relates to more positive attitudes toward minority groups and their practices.32 In contrast, coexistence tolerance emphasizes avoiding conflict as the best possible option. It remains pragmatic and offers no clear independent beneficial outcomes for minority groups. This differentiation allows to conceive tolerance and toleration dynamically. It permits to measure the movement from attitudes to practices, and from pragmatic coexistence to principled shared society, in which all are equally engaged in determining their values, norms, and practices, and the allocation of material and institutional resources. Given that power relations determine the nature of tolerance and its embedded social hierarchies, it is possible to capture the nature of power relations through verifying the tolerance model dominant in a particular context.33
Accordingly, tolerance is an ideological category leading to the depoliticizing of politics.34 Its structured relations constitute norms of evaluation or conduct and regulate difference.35 The virtuous face of tolerance could still conceal certain histories and create subjects and subjections.36 It could be a symptom of unfreedom and inequality, generating feelings of superiority and magnanimity in those espousing it. It could also be moralized and elevated. This is why it should be conceived as intermixed with power, a pretext for practicing hegemony, or a cover for domination and exclusion. It does not necessarily remove but does regulate prejudice and subordination.37 This critical understanding of tolerance should not abolish its good face or turn one against it. Nonetheless, when exploring tolerance in a social setting characterized by asymmetric power relations, it is important to be mindful of its multiple facets and meanings as well as its manipulative potential.
Focusing on the main causes of tolerance and toleration and elaborating on their manifestations in Haifa allows verification of how the dominant elites of the city deal with difference and facilitate peaceful relations between groups, while maintaining inequalities.
A Note on Method
Seeking to explore the uniqueness of Haifa, and to discover why it avoided the violence that erupted in May 2021 in other mixed/divided cities in Israel, common advantages that were accepted within the tradition of a single case study were adopted.38 A case study permits the development of concrete context-dependent knowledge that can be generalized; it also enables falsification of preconceived notions rather than being limited to their verification.39 Since this study of Haifa was problem-, rather than methodology driven, it employed a qualitative method based on interviews that could best answer the research questions. Interviews were not limited to collecting data about behavior, but also “about representations, classification systems, boundary work, identity, imagined realities and cultural ideals, as well as emotional states.”40 That given, there is awareness of the issue raised by Small and Cook whether interviews “should be used to capture anything other than people’s subjective accounts of their lives and circumstances . . . since what people say cannot be trusted” and are not “more than people’s words and what those words mean to them.”41 This study takes into consideration their five challenges faced by interview-based research—“deception, recall error, reasonableness bias, intentionality bias, and single-motive bias” and their proposals for dealing with them.42 Interviewees were encouraged to think about their interactional settings, social contexts, and institutional situations so that they might reveal relevant features of their basis in reality and how they imagine the meaning of their activities; their self-concept, fantasies about themselves and others, and their motivations.43 Thematic analysis was employed as a creative process of categorizing the similarities, differences, overlaps, and diversions in the available data.44 Recurring themes not immediately apparent in individual interviews were identified, and initial codes were generated to search for themes that were defined and named.45 Abstract theoretical frameworks were not imposed on reality, and both predefined analytic assumptions and the coding of data based on preexisting frames were avoided. This approach ensured a comprehensive and nuanced analysis of the data collected.
This analysis is based on in-depth interviews with two former mayors of the city; eight former and current municipal officials (six Jews and two Arabs) who play a prominent part in various cultural institutions of the city; three members of the municipal council (two Arabs and one Jew); and twelve prominent Arabs, active in the city’s public sphere. The interviews, which were recorded and thematically analyzed were conducted in the years 2019–2022 and each lasted around 90 minutes. Three major themes emerged from this analysis that could provide answers to the research questions that were raised earlier.
Thematic Analysis
Manufacturing Asymmetrical Tolerance
All officials interviewed, whether former mayors, former bureaucrats, or current heads of municipal institutions, were sincere and open about the city’s power structure. They described the Jewish majority’s upper hand in running most of the city, beginning with the municipality itself and ending with academic institutions, hospitals, museums, theaters, firms, and factories. A former mayor clearly admitted that “In general I agree that there is segregation in Haifa, let alone Jewish hegemony in every place and with every price.” Notwithstanding, he tried “to create the feeling that it is not a forced hegemony, or intentional superiority.” According to him, “there is shared life in Haifa that does not exist in other cities, such as Tel Aviv, Nof Hagalil, Ramleh, Lod, Akko. There is also a political and social partnership on a daily basis.” When asked if his statements do not mirror a whitewashing narrative that veils the national colonial reality in the city and replaces it with a soft liberal narrative of goodwill, he added:
the Jewish leaders of the city knew how not to expel the Arab inhabitants during the war of independence. They called on those who intended to leave to stay, and those who left to come back. I know there is a historical debate on this topic, but in general this is true. There are many who as a result remained.
Standing in immediate contrast with facts presented by several historians of the city, according to which most of the city’s Palestinian inhabitants were expelled and prevented from returning, the statements of the former mayor mirror the perceptions common among the city’s hegemonic majority.46 They reflect the official narrative that places the blame on the Arab inhabitants, who abandoned the city in 1948, despite the plea of the Jewish leadership, and thereby are the ones responsible for the demographic transformation of the city and the Jewish hegemony.
This dual narrative of a shared city on the one hand and Jewish hegemony on the other, downplaying the demographic transformation caused by the 1948 war and the destruction of Palestinian urban heritage, was reiterated by several Jewish officials. A past head of the municipality’s cultural department praised a former mayor for his active role in defending the rights of the Arab population, but simultaneously reflected its instrumentalization for political purposes. According to him:
Gurel [former mayor] was the first mayor to promote peaceful Jewish-Arab relations. One day he received a call that Meir Kahana [a racist Rabbi, head of the Kakh movement and Knesset member] is coming to the city and the police allowed him to organize a rally near the museum. When Kahana began talking, Gurel shouted at him and signaled with his hands a gesture that made clear he is cursing him. As a result, he won a lot of support in the coming elections.
This active, leading role of mayors in coexistence policies is confirmed by a former municipal official, who pointed to the December festival in which the three main religious groups—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—celebrate their holidays in one united “holiday of holidays” as an example of the efforts invested to promote coexistence tolerance. This former official stated:
What Mitzna changed in comparison to Gurel was adding to the celebration of Christmas and Hanukkah by Jews and Christians the celebration of Ramadan by Muslims . . . It was important for him that all three communities celebrated their holidays together in a very warm and welcoming atmosphere.
According to him, Mitzna encouraged exhibitions by Jewish and Arab artists and organized tours that brought thousands of visitors from across the country to Haifa. These efforts helped businesses in Arab neighborhoods and contributed to the peaceful atmosphere of shared life in the city, without changing the predominant power structure or overcoming socio-economic and national inequalities.
This thinking was confirmed by a former Arab municipal official, who emphasized that “Amram Mitzna was the top.” According to him, “in October 2000, during the second Intifada, Mitzna received information of police plans to enter Wadi Nisnas [Arab] neighborhood, where demonstrations had been taking place.” To keep the situation from deteriorating,
Mitzna went down to the point of friction between the police and the residents and prevented the police from entering. This brought peace to the city . . . and saw the Arab residents as integral part of the city.
According to the same official,
Mitzna courageously acted to protect Arab residents after Baruch Goldstein’s massacre in Hebron. He led a demonstration of Arab residents which began in Wadi Nisnas and ended at the gate of the municipality. On the way he was approached by one of the demonstrators who gave him the Palestinian flag. Mitzna walked all the way carrying the flag, thereby demonstrating his commitment to the sentiments of the Arab residents of the city.
In his view, Mitzna gave the Arab residents the sense that they are integral partners and an important part of the city. That is why “many Arabs will do anything to protect the city and contribute to its well-being.” This instrumental perception of coexistence tolerance is bluntly expressed by a former mayor, who said, “[Gurel] taught me that every shekel you invest in a Jewish neighborhood you invest in an Arab one. You need to create the sense that the Arabs have what to lose . . . It is a strategic goal.” This statement mirrors a pacification strategy, utilizing economic development to avoid unrest and violence. It illustrates once again the differentiation between tolerance that refers to attitudes, and toleration that is ingrained in social and political practices.47
In summary, in contrast to Lidd (Lod), where the mayor plays a major role in inciting against Arab citizens and promotes a purposeful policy of segregation and domination mayors in Haifa play a major role in engineering the sense of shared city.48 Deeply aware of the sensitive reality in the city, they utilize liberal political and economic policies to guarantee peaceful relations between Jews and Palestinians. The Arab population for its part is aware of this policy and even tolerates inequality, which motivates to further explicate the city’s unique situation.
Paternalistic Coexistence and Tolerating Inequality
Beyond admitting that there is an asymmetry of power in the city, the interviewees made clear that while there are boundaries for tolerance on the one hand, there is active engineering of coexistence on the other. All the interviewees made clear that most, if not all of Haifa’s municipal and public institutions, including academic institutions, hospitals, theaters, and museums are led by Jews. This state of affairs did not cause surprise or lead to criticism by any of the interviewees. Many of them made clear that it was natural, since Jews compose the absolute majority of the city’s population. When I expressed wonder about this situation, more than one interviewee argued that they—the Arab inhabitants—are welcome to take part in the activities of these institutions or to establish their own. A manager of one of the institutions admitted that “there is separation between Jews and Arabs in the city.” When asked about his responsibility to integrate Arabs and whether he had taken active steps to do so, he replied:
I tried several times to invite them [Arabs] to take part, but it has not worked . . . I am not a patronizing person. I don’t see myself superior to anyone. I have a problem with people who complain . . . I hate to speak to victims. There were people who came in the name of making justice . . . I did not understand what they expect from me . . . I felt many times that I am carrying traumas that are not related to me [as Jew]. I haven’t created them . . . for me it does not matter if we are talking about an Arab or Jew . . . it is important to work together. In most cases the fact that working with [Arabs] has not worked out was related to honesty. It is not about you being an Arab or not. I felt that there is antipathy towards me. I do not want to contain this feeling.
This long quotation clearly reflects the asymmetry of power and how people in charge of municipal institutions accept and even normalize the segregation that exists. They exempt themselves from responsibility to integrate Arab residents and ensure they receive the quality services they deserve. As this quote demonstrates, intolerance is manifested through patronizing language, characterized by misunderstanding, and pseudo-naiveté. It mirrors the difference between coexistence tolerance, as the willingness to live with something that you dislike and respect tolerance, according to which the dignity, rights, and liberties of others are valued.49 The interviewee expresses awareness of the centrality of the past in the experience, memory, and behavior of the Arab community. He is also aware of the impact of the Jewish hegemony over the city and its institutions. Nonetheless, he, like many other officials interviewed, exempts himself from responsibility, not for the past, but for the present reality in which Arabs are not integrated in one of the central institutions of the city. His attitude reflects the unwillingness of most of the interviewed officials to admit that the Arab community of the city is subordinate and needs active assistance to integrate within the municipal institutions. Most of the officials presented themselves as generous hosts, arguing that their institutions are open to and welcoming of everyone. Confronted with the argument that Arabs do not feel that they belong, and therefore a better integration strategy, such as appointing Arab managers, is necessary, the answer was that “it is not for them to decide,” or “we don’t make a unique effort to invite Jews to come and participate in activities.” When asked whether Arabs would hear Arabic in the theater or if works by Arab artists are exhibited in the museums, the answer was “it is not my role to do so.” This position brings to the fore the meaning of tolerance as forbearance of suffering or annoyance.
One of the former mayors clarified this type of paternalistic forbearance when he shared that he had invested a lot of energy and resources to encourage the Arab community to emulate the Jewish community. When speaking of his investment of resources in Arab neighborhoods by building sports halls so youths can exercise and play in respectable places rather than the streets, he added, “I want to see Arabs wearing white and playing tennis. I have not managed. They refused. I was strongly disappointed.” He admitted that the Arabs are [and should] be Israelizing.
They are adopting good characteristics of the Jews . . . but not enough . . . they should do what we have done. Why cry and speak about what has been done to them all the time . . . look at us. Many of us lost everything in the Holocaust . . . My parents closed the door and forgot about everything. They started from nothing, but invested all their energy in me . . . We have to work with what we have . . . My policy has been to invite the Arabs to participate . . . They have plenty of opportunities . . . They are smart enough and will follow the lead.
This former mayor used a well-known dual language of expressing much sympathy and understanding to the Arab inhabitants, but also indicating to them the right and wrong path to pursue. Delving deeper into this pattern of thinking shows that tolerance can be viewed as managing inequalities and securing the norms that create the objects of tolerance in the first place. The statements and examples given by this former mayor demonstrate that tolerance may regulate prejudice and subordination rather than remove them. This pattern was reiterated in the words of a Jewish city hall member, who admitted not tolerating calls for Palestinian symbols to be represented in Haifa’s public sphere. She spoke of the need for clear boundaries regarding the right of the Arab community to formulate, practice, and express its cultural and national identity. According to her, these boundaries should not infringe on her own identity and it is for her, as representative of the majority to determine what is allowable. Her paternalistic language marks the unacceptable manifestations of Arab identity that raise negative sentiments in her own community. In her view, the Arab community is given free rein in the city and should respect what the Jewish majority offers it. Raising Palestinian symbols is antagonistic and negative. It shows that part of the Arab community does not accept as it should the hegemonic Jewish majority’s right to determine the city’s identity and priorities. When mentioning the demand by Arab city hall members to name streets after Palestinian figures, such as poets, novelists, and historical heroes, she said,
The line of [X] is very narrow and I don’t want to say obsessive . . . he [the Arab city council member] brings names, such as [Y] . . . all are nationalistic. Don’t you have other names? . . . The perspective is very narrow . . . You want to tell me that there are no people of culture that are not Palestinian and have what to contribute . . . He comes with a clear agenda . . . I am not trying to set the boundaries . . . I can live with everything if there is balance . . . It is not reasonable . . . Do you agree to live in a city in which all the names are of women?
When confronted with the argument that Jews have the right to name streets after their heroes and symbolic figures, and that her position is paternalistic, seeking to impose her own national view on the Arabs, her response was aggressive:
I am not paternalistic. I see this as coexistence . . . I think the problem is about the boundaries. They [The Arabs] do not emphasize the cultural value of an issue, but the extent to which it is Palestinian or not . . . Is it the only criteria? Why not the cultural, educational and normative . . . Only the Palestinian . . . Is there a flag or not . . . The independence day or no . . . This issue of consciousness, remembrance, and forgetfulness has two sides . . . You cannot live based on what happened in the past only.
When asked if this insistence by some Arab representatives on the use of Palestinian symbols is related to the discrimination they face as Palestinians and feeling of the delegitimization of their identity, her answer was “aren’t the homosexuals or the Ethiopians discriminated against?” In her view, “if there is a sense among the Arabs that they do not get enough, it is not because they are Arabs . . . There are many problems that need to be resolved in the city.” This quotation clearly demonstrates the obsession of Israeli-Zionists with Palestinian nationality and their denial that the Arabs with whom they must live are part of the Palestinian people that happened to remain in their homeland after the Nakba. This obsession is deeply related to their reminder of the land’s history and of the Palestinians as victims of the Jewish state’s establishment. Her obsession mirrors the dual nature of tolerance as living with what one dislikes while also organizing asymmetric relations between people. This type of (in)tolerance is enacted through contingent and historically specific discourse; it speaks the language of tolerance to impose limits on the minority in the name of respecting the sensitivities of the majority. Such paternalistic (in)tolerance is designed to be the common wisdom for the Arab inhabitants who are expected to be satisfied with what they are offered by the Jewish majority and the municipality.
The boundaries of tolerance were clearly delineated by a former mayor whose words reflect the structural reality of the city. When asked why he objected to an Arab cultural institution’s plan to buy a historical house in Haifa for conversion into a cultural center, he spoke about the borderline between what is, and what is not legitimate. He explained that he did not like the nationalists, who in his view were behind the deal. He admitted,
I don’t like Balad [The National Democratic Assembly]. They are nationalists . . . I did not want them to be close to Wadi Nianas . . . I like Ra’am [the “pragmatic” Islamic movement headed by Manzur Abbas]. Balad delegitimizes me. I don’t want something that turns against me . . . I don’t have a problem with Palestinian culture . . . I have no problem living with Palestinians . . . I was afraid that Balad would incite against me . . . They will not be able to raise something constructive for the community. They are wasting a nice place that could be a large Arab cultural center or theater. I wanted to buy the place and turn it into the largest Arab cultural center in the country.
This statement illustrates the argument made by critical theorists that tolerance can be instrumental and utilized as a tool to suppress histories of conflict, to normalize colonial displacements, and enact normative abjection.50 This form of tolerance was confirmed by a former Arab city hall member, who stated:
There are clear boundaries . . . You are allowed to express yourself in art . . . You can express the discrimination and repression. People write about oppression, agony, and exclusion, but are not allowed to express who is responsible. It should not become part of a political campaign. Culture is a refuge. This means that they allow you to “let off steam,” as long as it is not part of a campaign . . . We are speaking of a dual game of both sides . . . There is a silent agreement between the municipality and the Arab population that nobody should lead to extremism. Not to push too much. There is a compensation for good Arabs, moderate Arabs . . . The boundaries are not fixed and context dependent.
This statement demonstrates that tolerance is nestled within larger political orders of power and meaning. It reflects a governing discourse that seems to enhance its power through explicit or tacit reference to an imagined virtue and history of (in)tolerance.
The Dialectic of Unequal Integration
Critics have theorized that tolerance is an ideology that veils the true political reality of power relations and oppression.51 This understanding was clearly reflected in one of the most honest interviews. A prominent figure in a city museum shared, “I work in a municipal institution . . . I have the board over my head . . . I have to take into consideration the spirit of Miri Regev [the minister of culture at the time, who promoted a law ‘loyalty in culture,’ according to which a cultural production not meeting the standards of loyalty expected from the ministry would not be funded] . . . Nonetheless, the museum allowed for a real dialogue to take place, far beyond what the Israeli society can take . . . but the boundaries I can cross are limited . . . I have to find the way.” After clarifying this point and the negotiations she had to make with her supervisors in the municipality, she shared a particularly telling example:
Lamis’ (an Arab artist) wanted to call out the traces of the Nakba . . . I cannot officially use the word Nakba . . . I checked with a lawyer, and she said no way. She recommended to use any other name but not Nakba. Use the war of 1948. This is the most neutral concept . . . but Majid [the artist who wrote the signs] used the name Nakba. It is a very sensitive issue with the municipality and other players . . . Can I turn him [Majid] into Israeli-Arab? Who am I?
Reflecting on the dilemmas she faced in the city, she admitted that the official line won out at the end of the day.
The word Nakba was missing. I don’t want censorship. I was in a daily war in order to allow a Palestinian voice to be heard. The manager said once why are you bringing in Palestinians here? I tried to explain . . . Can you tell the story of Haifa without? Every attempt to allow a Palestinian voice was a battle . . . The end results were not perfect, but given that we have to get the funds for everything, we managed to introduce some change.
Notwithstanding her critique of the official politics in the city, she admitted that “in Haifa you get what you don’t see in other cities . . . It is not ideal. I don’t want to speak about a utopia. But in Haifa there is a real mixture . . . You hear Arabic everywhere and it is normal.” This interviewee’s statement illustrates the form of governmentality operating in the city. The mention of Miri Regev demonstrated the outside pressures exerted on the city. The crisis with the Arab Al-Midan theater located in Haifa and partially financed by the city is a good example of how the boundaries discussed by the last interviewee underwent tremendous shifts as a result of the nationalistic waves taking place in Israeli society.52 Part of the claims made by municipal officials were framed not as censorship, but as protective measures and caution in the face of an extremely nationalistic government. Several officials who were interviewed admitted that the limiting of Palestinian activism was designed to save the city from falling into a nationalist trap.
This duality was raised by an Arab leader who held several official positions in the city. When asked about the policies of the municipality, he said, “they want coexistence, but a paternalistic one. It is the coexistence of the Likud [which is based on the master-slave dialectic] . . . They allow Arab cultural activities, but that should not injure the public sentiment . . . It is about disciplining with soft power . . . Delegitimizing the extremist from both sides.” His sarcastic tone reflected his unease at the comparison often made by officials between Arabs, like him, who insist on their Palestinian identity, and the messianic radical nationalist right on the Jewish side. This equation is problematic for him since it naturalizes the position that Palestinian identity is extreme, but Jewish national identity is not.
One of the Jewish interviewees, responsible for cultural activities in one of the major institutions in the city argued:
I do not think that the Palestinian culture will be given a municipal support. There will not be public funding for Arab cultural associations that produce Palestinian culture, and municipal funding will not be given to them. The moment Al-Midan theater engaged in an “unaccepted” cultural venture, they were terminated. At a level of agenda, the municipality will not allow an original inherent Palestinian culture to prosper with public funding. There was an association that wanted the municipality to adopt it, but it was declared inappropriate. They only agreed to some filtered content.
This viewpoint was reiterated by another official, who emphasized the use of “public feelings” to censor cultural activities that do not meet the limits set by the municipality. He clarified that when speaking of “public feelings” what is meant is the Jewish public, who will not tolerate cultural activities that are conceived as inspired by Palestinian nationalism. He mentioned that there are radical nationalist Jewish activists who monitor what is conducted or presented by public institutions such as Beit Hagefen. They publish their critique of these institutions, arguing that such activities, dependent on public funds, are in clear violation of the “public feelings.” This reality has been the case whenever an official institution announced an activity that has a Palestinian tagging. This strategy of radical Jewish activists was mentioned by another Arab official from one of the central municipal institutions. However, in his view, it is not always successful, as in the case of the Week of Palestinian Culture a few years ago, or the play The Women of Hamas, the strategy to embarrass the municipality and pressure the mayor and his/her team to avoid being identified with such activities, has become common.53 These statements clearly mirror the norms that the model of coexistence tolerance in Haifa circulates and how discourses of tolerance naturalize the identities they appear only to manage.
The Duality of Tolerance and the Justification of Inequality
The three themes discussed earlier provide sufficient evidence as to the main feature of Haifa’s tolerance model, which is rooted in fostering asymmetric conditional coexistence. They clarify that the city’s tolerance model can be mainly explained by the incorporation policies of the municipality, representing the boundaries set up by the city’s dominant Jewish elites. However, this reasoning is insufficient. The official policies of the municipality, mirroring the political will of the Jewish majority, are not solely responsible when seeking to fully explain Haifa’s tolerance model. As clarified in this section, the main characteristics of the Arab community also play a major role in explaining Haifa’s uniqueness. Most Arab interviewees described two major characteristics of Haifa’s Arab community that play a major role in sustaining the prevalent tolerance model and in their view differentiate it from other “mixed” cities. These characteristics are the socio-historical identity and the socio-economic status of most of the Arabs in the city.
It is important to start by explaining that the Arab experience of the city is diverse. All Arab interviewees agreed that the Arab presence in the city was legitimate and good, but asymmetric, and tolerated only as long as it keeps within the boundaries set for it by the majority and the municipality. Furthermore, they fully agreed that the composition of the Arab social fabric in the city makes it possible to manage the tolerance model promoted by the municipality. The interviews revealed a clear class and religious differentiation among the city’s Arab inhabitants. The vast majority are middle class and educated, who settled in the city after studying in one of its academic institutions and were integrated within one of its social, cultural, economic, or health establishments.54 Most are Christians, but the number of Muslims among this class is on the rise. At the same time, there is a small minority of low socio-economic status living in segregated neighborhoods who are mostly Muslim.
One of the interviewees explained, “Haifa is a place of immigrants. They moved here from their villages. Haifa as a city started to absorb educated Arabs. The majority are not natives of Haifa. It is a city that accepts.” Another interviewee added:
Who are the Arabs of Haifa? It is either students who studied here and stayed to work or people having various economic or social obstacles in their villages or towns, including LGBT people who want to escape the conservative atmosphere in their villages. Haifa embraces silently. It is a city of “We won’t pay attention and won’t bother you.”
The emphasis on immigration is crucial since it pinpoints a major factor determining the policies of the municipality on the one hand and the salient patterns of behavior among the Arab minority on the other. The municipality seeks ways to limit this immigration, without openly stating this policy, which would tarnish the image of tolerance it propagates. The Arabs of the city attempt to maintain autonomous spaces by establishing their own institutions, especially in the field of education and culture.55
A third interviewee elaborated on the issue of class by clarifying that in the past the Arab elite in Haifa was mostly Christian. This elite controlled, and remains in control, of most private educational institutions in the city. But in her view, this reality is changing:
Although there is still a very clear ethno-class differentiation in the Arab community of the city, the Muslim community is becoming dominant, as a result of the immigration of an increasing number of wealthy secular Muslim families to the city . . . These people seek opportunities to improve their standards of living and Haifa offers them options that they cannot have in their original villages and towns.
When asked about the asymmetries of power in the city, she added, “most of the Arabs are fond of the city and what it offers . . . despite the fact that they are aware of the inequality in the city.” Haifa “makes it possible for them to combine the opportunities to receive good education for their children and promote their economic status in the job market of the city.” She mentioned how the Arab community exerts pressure on the municipality during elections. In some cases, she added, the Arab voters can be crucial for candidates and as a result can put pressure to receive more resources and care.
This analysis, according to which the asymmetric coexistence tolerance model in the city is sustained by the Arab residents, was reiterated by another Arab official from one of Haifa’s central municipal institutions. According to him, many of the Arabs “are former students, who studied in the city and remained to work . . . They abandoned their villages in order to look for a better life and peaceful atmosphere . . . We have to take into consideration that economic motivations have overridden national considerations. There is mutual tolerance for economic purposes.” In this context, he mentioned the centrality of the private school system in the city, which frees the municipality from the burden of providing good-quality schooling for over ten thousand Arab children. Parents pay for their children’s education. They prefer not to send their children to public schools, since they have the resources to buy what they conceive to be the highest quality of education possible for them. According to him, most of the Arab community prefer Arab schools over Jewish schools in order “to maintain the cultural and linguistic identity of their kids and get a high level education.” In this way, separation is not conceived as segregation.
Another female official mentioned the fact that most Arab residents of the city belong to the middle class and are able to buy their social, educational, and cultural services with their own resources. Most of these families send their children to private schools, since in her view it is common that “where your children study is what and who you are.” Accordingly, those in the poorer neighborhoods send their children to public schools, for they have no resources to buy the educational services offered by private schools. She asked sarcastically, “who wants to be affiliated with the lower classes in the city?” This question led her to admit that this reality is a result of a bilateral game. The Arab upper middle class is willing to buy the services it sees fit in order to maintain its status vis-à-vis the lower classes, who are dependent on services provided by the municipality. This differential class reality benefits the latter. She believes the presence of private schools saves the municipality a lot of resources that it would need to invest in providing educational services for the growing Arab community. Keeping the lower classes in the municipal education system allows the maintenance of class differentiation on the one hand, and the dependence of these classes on low-cost public services on the other.
According to another Arab city hall member:
Haifa is the Tel Aviv for the Arabs, especially the youth. Haifa is a liberal city [in comparison to other Arab towns]. It is much easier to live and immigrate to Haifa. The immigration has dual face. You have people that head a department at the Rambam hospital on the one hand and you have the tragic side of broken families and banned people on the other . . . The immigrant youth don’t necessarily live in Arab neighborhoods. The liberal character of Haifa has to do with the fact that it is a Jewish majority. There are broader liberal spaces.
Many of the city’s Arabs are not officially registered as residents, but still live in Haifa and enjoy its liberal atmosphere. Notwithstanding, he admits that one of the reasons behind the pragmatic position of most Arabs in the city is economic. In his view, “Arabs are always afraid to be boycotted by Jewish residents, if they cross the symbolic line of tolerance.” He shared that “Arab businesses beg me to avoid organizing demonstrations near their shops . . . they tell me that every time a demonstration takes place and Palestinian flags are raised, the reaction is that Jewish clients stop coming. This silent boycott damages their business.” For him, this is proof that it is not only the policies of the municipality that determine the coexistence model in the city. According to him, “people are aware that they are tolerated as long as they play according to the rules set up to them by the Jewish majority and that they do not pass the red lines drawn to them by the municipality.” These statements make clear that tolerance is not necessarily a matter of justice but may be deeply rooted in the overlap between the maintaining of social hierarchies and punitive sanctions.
Conclusion
This article sought to decode the puzzle of Haifa and examine the tolerance model that sustains the relatively peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians in the city. This thematic analysis has clearly shown that the sharp binary differentiation between characteristics of mixed and divided cities is not necessarily relevant for Haifa.56 Dichotomous ontologies are unhelpful in providing a close and accurate picture of ethno-political relations in Haifa that have been undergoing tremendous demographic changes. The thematic analysis affords a panoramic view of the meeting of operative public values and practices promoting an asymmetric coexistence rather than respect toleration model whereby the Jewish majority maintains control of most, if not all public institutions and sets the boundaries of freedom and autonomy dictating the political culture of the city. The way municipal officials conceive and conceptualize tolerance transforms its liberal meaning into an ideological tool to veil consensual subordination. This reality leads to the conclusion that the shared spaces in the city of Haifa are constrained and result from a social engineering process, orchestrated by the municipality. Municipal officials manufacture consent through a social, economic, and cultural division of labor that satisfies the city’s dominant elites. The prevalent asymmetric coexistence toleration model in the city is determined by the power structure in which the hegemonic majority utilizes the socio-economic characteristics of the city’s Arab community to set clear boundaries between the possible and the impossible. Given the lack of better options for the Arab community, most of its members approve the asymmetric reality, utilizing the spaces the city allows to maximize their benefits.57
The examination of the case of Haifa improves awareness of the vulnerabilities of the Palestinian citizens and the significant injustices they experience. It enables to better understand why and how Haifa is unique among other mixed/divided cities in Israel. Although comparisons have not been drawn with other mixed/divided cities in Israel, the available literature on them, especially regarding inter-communal violence, allows to argue that Haifa is truly different.58 Although the sophisticated model of tolerance promoted by the municipality with the silent support of the Jewish majority and the consent of the Arab minority does not turn it into an oasis of equality, it does prevent deterioration into rage and violence when national tensions between Jews and Palestinians surface. The prevalent model of asymmetric coexistence tolerance maintains the balance between the willingness of the Jewish majority to live with something it does not necessarily like and its hegemonic status in the city. The paternalistic language of many interviewed officials, including mayors, demonstrates the governing formula that enables the municipality to regulate the pressures from below at a minimal cost. What enables the persistence of the prevalent model of asymmetric coexistence toleration is its acceptance by the Palestinian minority despite the historical, economic, and social injustices it entails. Haifa behaves like a city-state by offering unique social, economic, and cultural opportunities lacking in other mixed/divided cities and in the native towns and villages of most of its Arab residents. Although without surrounding walls, it has managed, so far, to relatively seal itself from external negative influences that have led to the eruption of ethnic violence in other cities.59
That the majority of the Palestinian population is composed of immigrants, who remained in the city after having come to study and work, facilitates lowering expectations and promotes pragmatic perception of inequalities experienced. Furthermore, given the high socio-economic status of the majority of Palestinian residents, most are able and willing to pay for the educational, social, and cultural services they need. This common pattern of behavior exempts the municipality from investing in infrastructures that would strain the tolerance of the Jewish majority. In other words, the mutual asymmetric tolerance in Haifa enables the suppression of residual conflicts and the normalization of colonial practices. It provides Jews and Palestinians with a coexistence formula that allows them to forbear the suffering it entails.
The case of Haifa shows that the political regimes of toleration are themselves discursive, nesting within larger “normative orbits – norms of supremacy or equality, mutuality or antagonism, organicism or individuality, membership or citizenship.”60 Despite the fact that the dominant discourses of coexistence tolerance are inadequate to empower the marginalized, in some cases, they offer them opportunities unavailable elsewhere. The case of Haifa illustrates that liberal tolerance is mostly rooted in a discourse of coexistence that sustains the hierarchies embedded in power relations. Revealing the cunning reason of liberal tolerance, as manifested in the discourse of municipal officials in Haifa, compels to consider respect tolerance, rooted in substantial recognition of the equal status of all individuals and communities in the city, if Haifa is to be transformed into an ideal-type worthy of imitation by other cities in the country. It is essential to begin by acknowledging difference and recognizing its legitimate repercussions on the political, economic, and cultural avenues of life. Toleration cannot be limited to interpersonal attitudes of living with what one dislikes. As a formula of governance, it must embody principles of equality, justice, and genuine proportional power-sharing in all public institutions determining the allocation of resources for the common good of every citizen. Tolerance must be transformed into toleration with intentional governmental and institutional policies and principles that limit discrimination and promote equality.
Although Haifa could serve as a good model of liberal tolerance, this is not sufficient to diminish prejudices, inequalities, injustices, and institutional and discursive hierarchies. To be a good model for other mixed/divided cities in Israel and elsewhere, its deficiencies must be commonly deconstructed by debate and discussion. The question that arises in this case is: How to overcome the limits of tolerating liberal tolerance that regulates inequality and sustains injustice and thereby moderate the serious treatment of their ramifications? To answer this question, there is a need to broaden the scope of this study and seek examples in other cities, where coexistence tolerance has been either transformed into respect toleration or has led to interruptions that destabilized their peaceful image.
Notes
The research for this article has been funded by the Walter Lebach Institute for the Study of Jewish-Arab Coexistence at Tel Aviv University.
Rolly Rosen, Breaking Down the Walls: Municipal Response to the May 2021 Riots in Haifa and Lessons for Managing Shared Society (Lod: Abraham Initiatives Association, 2022).
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Rosen, Breaking Down the Walls; Oded Ron, Ben Fargeon, and Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya, Arab Residents in Mixed Cities (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2022).
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Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, 36.
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Velthuis et al., The Different Faces of Tolerance.
James L. Gibson, “Enigmas of Intolerance: Fifty Years after Stouffer’s Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties,” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 1 (2006): 21–34.
Salvoj Zizek, “Tolerance as an Ideological Category,” Critical Inquiry 34, no. 4 (2008): 660–82.
Dobbernack and Modood, Tolerance in Critical and Political Theory.
Brown, “What is Important in Theorizing Tolerance Today?”
Brown, “What is Important in Theorizing Tolerance Today?”
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Lamont and Swidler, “Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits of Interviewing.”
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It is important to note that in February 2024, public pressure on the municipal legal adviser led him to prevent Beit Hagefen from organizing a book launch event. The book, a biographical novel, was about the friendship of bereaved parents Rami Elhanan and Bassem Aramin, who were both executive directors of the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families Forum. https://haipo.co.il/en/item/500643.
Oded et al., Arab Residents in Mixed Cities.
Maoz and Karkabi, “Haifa City Profile: Emergent Binationalism in a Settler Colonial City”; Diab, Shedma, and Schnell 2022)
Calame and Charlesworth, Divided Cities
Rosen, Breaking Down the Walls.
Khaizran and Ziv, What is a City if Not Mixed?; Yael Shmaryahu-Yehurun, “Settlement Policy in an Israeli Mixed City: A Typology of Displacement and its Resistance,” Urban Studies 60, no. 13 (2023): 2686–705; Ran Kuttner, “From Co-existence to Shared Society: A Paradigm Shift in Intercommunity Peacebuilding among Jews and Arabs in Israel,” Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 10, no. 3 (2017): 179–98.
Rosen, Breaking Down the Walls.
Brown, “What is Important in Theorizing Tolerance Today?” 162.