About 2,500 residents of the Kfar Shalem slum quarter demonstrated against Mayor Shlomo Lahat outside City Hall here last night. The protestors, angry but non-violent, accused the mayor of applying a double standard in dealing with municipal violations in rich and poor neighborhoods. They also hold him responsible for the fatal shooting of a Kfar Shalem resident by police last month.
The demonstrators carried placards reading, “Lahat Resign”, “Justice for the South” and “Rehabilitate, Don’t Destroy.” Shouts of “Lahat, Murderer,” rang out.
Kfar Shalem, one of the slum districts that lie in the southern reaches of the sprawling Tel Aviv metropolitan region, is inhabited largely by Oriental Jews. They contend that when one of them violates a municipal rule by building an extension to a house without a permit, the Mayor sends in bulldozers to demolish the structure. The same sort of violation in the more affluent neighborhoods of north Tel Aviv brings only a fine, they say.
Shimon Yehoshua, an Oriental Jew, was shot after he allegedly fired on police escorting a demolition team to knock down an extension his family had built on their Kfar Shalem dwelling without a permit. The incident touched off a wave of vandalism and defacements aimed at Ashkenazic Jews which began in Tel Aviv and spread to Jerusalem at the end of last month. Lahat and Interior Minister Yosef Burg were the chief targets.
Last Friday, Kfar Shalem residents prevented the Mayor and members of the Knesset’s Interior Committee from entering the district to investigate conditions.
Meanwhile, Tel Aviv Magistrate Vardina Simon, named to conduct a coroner’s inquest into the shooting of Yehoshua, postponed a decision on whether she is qualified to hear the case. She gave no reason. The police and the local residents want an inquest but the family of the deceased has refused to permit an autopsy.
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