Several Hundred Slum Dwellers Stage Demonstration in Tel Aviv

The residence of Mayor Shlomo Lahat and the surrounding neighborhood were under heavy police guard last night after serveral hundred angry slum-dwellers from the Kfar Shalem quarter threatened violence.

They were protesting the demolition of two houses in Kfar Shalem that had been built on city-owned land without a permit. A riot broke out in Kfar Shalem yesterday morning when local residents tried to prevent municipal workers from bull-dozing the buildings. One policeman was injured, a city-owned vehicle was burned and a bus was damaged in the melee. Five residents were arrested.

Early yesterday evening, a convoy of cars from Kfar Shalem converged on the Afeka quarter where the Mayor lives. They ran into a cordon of police and after angry words, eventually dispersed. But police guards patrolled the area thoughout the night.

Lahat charged that the people who erected the illegal buildings and led the protesters were trying to lay claim to municipal property. They had been given several warnings to dismantle the structures themselves.

Lahat noted that in the past, people who put up buildings without permits were compensated when the structures were torn down. But the land remains the prop- erty of the city and cannot be seized or built on without a license, he stressed. The police, meanwhile, have apologized to Likud MK Michael Eitan who took up the cause of the Kfar Shalem slum-dwellers. Eitan said he was summoned to the quarter by telephone before dawn yesterday to try to prevent the demolitions.

He charged that police roughed him up and blocked his way in violation of his immunity as a Knesset member, which allows him complete freedom of movement. The police admitted today that a senior officer had erred in barring Eitan’s approach.