One year after Operation Solomon, the daring airlift that brought more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the vast majority of the Ethiopian immigrants are still living in temporary housing.
Just who is responsible for this depends on one’s point of view. Many immigration officials are critical of the Housing Ministry, while the ministry blames the government. The government, of course, blames both.
Of the 14,160 Ethiopians who arrived during Operation Solomon, 1,145 have moved into public rental housing. Another 506 have purchased homes with large grants from the government. The rest live in absorption centers, immigrant hotels or mobile homes.
Even more disturbing is the fact that of the 43,000 Ethiopians who have immigrated to Israel overall, including 7,500 during Operation Moses in 1984-85, 24,000 still live in temporary dwellings.
All sides agree that the immigrants need real homes where they can live a normal family life. The communal-style living characteristic of hotels and absorption centers disrupts the family hierarchy and deprives the olim of privacy.
“Our goal is to move every immigrant into permanent housing by the end of the year,” says Micha Feldmann, head of the Jewish Agency’s Department of Immigration for Ethiopians. “Whether we can do so will depend on how many units the Ministry of Housing makes available to us. So far, we’ve filled every apartment that has come our way.”
DON’T WANT TO LEAVE MOBILE HOMES
The Housing Ministry says that the apartments are available and that all Ethiopians from Operation Solomon will be out of hotels and into apartments or mobile homes by the end of next month, in accordance with a promise it made to the Cabinet last June.
“We have apartments for every family that wants one,” says Shia Segal, Housing Minister Ariel Sharon’s press secretary. “The fact is that many of the Ethiopians like the mobile homes and don’t want to leave them. When they do agree to leave, they want to live with their extended families, and it’s hard to find a building with 15 empty apartments.”
Realizing that home ownership is a concept foreign to most Ethiopians, the ministry would like to rent out 13,000 brand-new apartments. However, the Treasury rejects this idea, on the grounds that the units’ value will decrease once they have been lived in. The Knesset has ordered the two sides to reach a compromise.
At Bat Hatzur, a caravan park near the town of Gedera, 3,000 new immigrants live in tiny mobile homes while trying to become accustomed to their new country.
For the residents, half of whom are Ethiopian, life is a struggle. While the policy-makers and politicians battle it out elsewhere, the immigrants try to come to terms with an alien culture.
Whereas immigrants from the former Soviet republics are usually educated and versed in the rudiments of Western society, the Ethiopians come much less equipped to deal with life in Israel, says the park’s director, Shai Fruchtman.
In his tiny caravan-cum-office, Fruchtman and his staff seem to handle a dozen things at once.
“During the first year, the (Jewish) Agency provides all immigrants with housing, furniture, clothing, health care and education,” he explains. “Basically, the Ethiopians came with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. We’ve had to teach them how to use a refrigerator and oven, how to go to the bank and buy food in the supermarket.”
‘DIFFERENT VALUES AND CUSTOMS’
In many ways, the caravan park operates like a small town. There is a supermarket, a doctor’s office, a school and a police station. And, like many small towns with different ethnic groups, there are clearly defined “neighborhoods.”
The Ethiopians and Russians do not mix very much, Fruchtman notes, “and this is our luck. They are very different people with different values and customs. If they were to live right on top of one another, it would create tension.”
Bat Hatzur, which was created 14 months ago, “has learned from other’s mistakes,” he says. “In other parks, the immigrants lived all together, and the Russians didn’t like the Ethiopians’ cooking smells and music, while the Ethiopians found the Russians aloof.
“Here, the two populations get together to celebrate holidays and some other communal events. It seems to be a good balance,” Fruchtman says.
Malhik Admasu, 35, and his wife, Ronitu, 29, came to Israel from Gondar exactly one year ago. They moved to Bat Hatzur four months ago, after first residing in an immigrant hotel.
A farmer by profession, Malhik is now unemployed, though he hopes to find a job soon. Like virtually all Ethiopian mothers, Ronitu does not seek work outside the home, preferring instead to raise the couple’s four children.
They have turned their caravan, with its tiny children’s room, another bedroom and a kitchen, into a home. Photographs and colorful hand-made baskets lend a personal touch to the standard-issue furnishings.
The children, all dressed in clothes donated by Israelis following last May’s airlift, give shy smiles. The younger ones speak good basic Hebrew, thanks to daily lessons in school.
‘WANTED A REAL APARTMENT’
“We are happy to be out of the hotel,” says Malhik, “but we wanted a real apartment, not a caravan. My father, who is all alone, lives in Rehovot, and he has no one to take care of him. We’ve asked for a rental apartment in Rehovot, but so far, nothing.”
David Mengistu, the father of nine children, has been in Israel a year and a half, and he says he is frustrated. “We spent a year in an absorption center in Tivon before coming here. We wanted a real apartment, a permanent place in a real town.”
Sitting on a curb outside a row of mobile homes, a half-dozen men compare their old and new homes.
Negate Tezazu, who immigrated less than a month ago, tells the gathering that “there is never enough food to eat in Ethiopia. There is no land, no democracy.”
When Tezazu has finished, someone admits, “It’s easy to forget why we came here.”
In true Israeli fashion, he adds in Hebrew, “Yehiyeh be’seder (It’ll all turn out OK).”
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