Wet paint

A FRESHLY painted park bench in Netanya – the Israeli coastal resort twinned with Bournemouth. The notice says "wet paint" in Hebrew, English and Russian. The Israeli Palestinian girl – one of the 20 per cent of Israel's citizens whose first language is Arabic – smiles wryly. During my last few days as a human rights monitor in Israel Palestine I reflect that maybe it's time to talk a bit about Israel.

I watch a documentary – Voices from El Sayed – about the largest deaf community in the world. This tribe makes up some of the 80,000 Bedouin living in unrecognised villages in the Negev desert. Because Israel doesn't recognise them – although they were there first – they get no basic services. The camera shows huge electricity pylons dominating their homes. But they are not connected to the grid and supply themselves a few hours' power a day from a private generator. Israeli clinicians who want to give one of the children a cochlear implant had no idea their fellow citizens can't ensure the constant supply of power he needs for a successful outcome.

Another sad detail emerges. One of the young men can read and write Hebrew and English but not Arabic. He went to a Jewish boarding school for the deaf. Although he comes from the largest deaf community in the world, his state, to which he pays taxes, makes no provision for him.

On every side in a country which looks so beautiful and normal I discover the discrimination not very far beneath the surface. My friend Talila, peace activist and Israeli Jew, suggests an alternative tour of Jaffa – the city known to Arabs as Fiancée of the Sea. It's quite a tourist attraction with colonies of artists' studios and chi-chi craft shops and beautiful old Maronite houses now restored.

Talila, my translator, is a bit upset that all the street names commemorate famous Jews. "They are all good people but this is in the middle of an Arab town," she says.

Not quite as Arab as it used to be, however – our guide, another Israeli Jew, tells us that the Arab population has dropped from 147,000 in 1947 to 30,000 now. The municipality used a couple of effective techniques to get hold of many houses, said Judit, the guide. To repair your house you needed a permit and permits were never issued to Arabs. When the houses fell into disrepair the authorities said they were not fit for human habitation and the families were forced out.

"When the Arabs left the houses they immediately started repairing them," Judit said. "Suddenly the developers got permits to do that."

In many cases Arab owners were forced to sign contracts in Hebrew which they couldn't read. The contracts signed over ownership to the state and the erstwhile owners became tenants. Worse, their protected tenancies only lasted two generations so the grandchildren born to those who signed had no title.

"The babies from the day of their birth were intruders – it was a very clear policy of ethnic cleansing," Judit said.

She mentions the Arabs who poured into Jaffa from the surrounding villages in the wake of the founding of the Jewish state. They were told Jaffa was not their town and they should go back to their homes. But their homes had been flattened in an operation which destroyed over 500 Arab villages in the effort to create Israel.

It becomes increasingly clear that some of the aggressive town planning policies we see being implemented in the West Bank which result in Arab dispossession and land gains for Jews have already been perfected in Israel proper. And as we also see in the West Bank, Jews of good will and clear sight work with Arabs who don't give up.

Judit allows one of her comrades, an Israeli Arab, the last word on the attractive city they share. "I believe that if we work together and combine forces we can succeed in preventing this process of getting rid of the Arab population of Jaffa," he said. In Hebrew.