Petah Tikva passes resolution to bar Ethiopians from city slums

Petah Tikva's municipal council on Sunday approved a proposal to bar any more immigrants from Ethiopia from purchasing apartments in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the city. The city council has contacted the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption requesting to raise the mortgage grants to immigrants of Ethiopian descent in order to enable them to purchase apartments in better areas in the city.

This move seeks to curb the ongoing process of slums expansion and enlarged concentrations of immigrant population in the city. Ethiopian immigrants support the move to increase their mortgage grants. However, they are less pleased with the restrictions imposed by the city council, which they say denies them of basic rights and has racist overtones.

In a letter Petah Tikva Mayor Yitzhak Ohaion wrote to Immigrant Absorption Minister Ze'ev Boim, he said "rehabilitation neighborhoods - which have already achieved a balanced community - are falling apart and deteriorating once more [following the inflow of Ethiopian immigrants]."

"Had the absorption basket been increased by $30-$50 thousand to purchase apartments, the immigrant community could have been housed in well-established neighborhoods and not only in rehabilitation neighborhoods," Ohaion said.

"I am taking care of the Ethiopian [immigrants'] future, not a racist," he told Haaretz on Sunday.

One thousand Ethiopian immigrant families currently live in Petah Tikva. Another 500 families from the Falashmura community are supposed to join them in the coming months. The Falashmura are Ethiopians whose ancestors converted from Judaism to Christianity several generations ago.

"The Immigrant Absorption Ministry is looking to justify its existence by creating ghettos for Ethiopian immigrants," a senior city official said, "instead of increasing the mortgage grant for immigrants so that they can buy apartments in better neighborhoods, and helping them obtain housing. The ministry is looking for someone to blame, instead of looking for a solution.

"Eighty percent of the students in the national-religious school are Ethiopian immigrants, and there are 40 students to a class. It's impossible to educate them like that," Ohayon said. "I am going to meet with [Sephardic] Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar this Wednesday and ask him to issue a dispensation to allow the Falashmura children to go to the regular state school while receiving lessons in Judaism to prepare them for their conversion process," Ohayon said.

"The ministry sends me the immigrants without preparing for their absorption, which ruins both the community and the city," the mayor continued. "I will not let the Ethiopian children become criminals in a few years after finding themselves out on the street because there's no room in the classrooms for them now. How can we provide a good education to children who have just arrived in the country and who need to learn the language when there are more than 40 crowded into every classroom?" Ohayon said.