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Light Years Away
Matti Friedman
 DESPERATE TO MOVE OUT: Kinde Melase, 25, is one of the many Ethiopian residents anxious to leave Neveh Carmel |
HOF HACARMEL, AT THE southern exit from Haifa, looks like a testament to Israel�s commercial future: The area boasts a flashy new mall, an equally flashy convention center, several construction sites, and the Matam high-tech park, home to Intel and IBM and more.
But a few hundred meters from the upscale air-conditioned stores of the shopping mall and across the highway from Matam�s gleaming buildings,
Asafa Getahon, 26, is lying underneath a eucalyptus tree, among empty trailer homes and weeds, seeking respite from the heat. Around the tree, their hair in braids, flower-print dresses billowing, three little girls chase each other.
Getahon and the children are residents of Neveh Carmel, a neglected absorption camp that is currently home to 150 Ethiopian immigrants, most of whom have been living here for about five years.
Amid the construction, Neveh Carmel is all but impossible to see: The camp is not visible from the mall, which has no windows on that side. From the road, the site looks abandoned, to those who notice it at all. Signs of life become evident only when one enters the camp, traversing the scraggly trees and brush at the side of the road: a child pushing a shopping cart, bright laundry hanging limply in the fierce sun.
Most of the families that made up the always changing population of the camp, set up in 1992, are gone, says Getahon, moved on to better lives in Gederah and Netanyah and Ashdod. But the 55,000-shekel ($13,750) mortgage that the Absorption Ministry has been providing to single people is not nearly enough to get an apartment, and that has left many unmarried young people and divorcees here, feeling more and more invisible.
Mandefro Alemo, the camp�s maintenance man, sporting a mustache and a white knitted yarmulke, pulls up in a van and parks next to the tree. He starts by upbraiding Getahon. �If you really had guts, you wouldn�t be lying here,� Alemo tells him. �You should bang on the table. Protest to the prime minister! That�s the only way to change the situation.� Getahon makes a weary hand gesture. �We�re going to have a meeting of all the residents, and you won�t come,� Alemo continues, then mutters again: �He won�t come.�
Alemo leads the way to the camp�s office, a grimy trailer a few meters away, to show off
a letter that he and other leaders of the community wrote in June to Absorption Minister Yuli Tamir. The residents� list of complaints was long, beginning with the size of the mortgages but relating too to disturbances from the massive construction nearby and the frequent break-ins and theft. But, in truth, residents here seem to have given up
hope of improving conditions at the camp, and are intent only on getting out. And the Ministry of Absorption appears to share the mindset: The camp is set to shut down only in October 2001, but when the majority of its population left, the health clinic and the grocery store were closed, and the soldier-teachers who provided educational and social assistance to the immigrants disappeared.
A month after receiving the residents� letter, Tamir sent them a brief reply, assuring them that she had instructed her staff to help in any way possible. And indeed, a few weeks ago, the Finance Ministry agreed to increase the mortgage granted to single olim to 230,000 shekels, taking it back to its 1993 dollar value. Still, it�s anyone�s guess when Alemo and the other residents of the camp will actually be able to obtain this sum; given their feelings of abandonment, and their distrust of the government ministries on which they are so dependent, the residents of Neveh Carmel can be forgiven for being skeptical.
At present, they remain virtually unseen in the dust of the building boom, as do oth-er Ethiopians who still reside in the Hatzrot Yosaf camp near Nahariyah and in six other absorption centers around the country.
Alemo�s efforts to win attention for Neveh Carmel�s plight appear to be out of the ordinary; other camp residents are more like Getahon � listless, inactive and apparently unable to help themselves.
Tohabe Sitowar, 24, and Tali Brachani, 25, emerge from a dark mobile home into the sunlight. Are they working? Sitowar mumbles something about how the government employment office hasn�t provided good jobs. Across the street, at the gleaming headquarters of the Netvision Internet provider, young techies sporting red ID cards go on their lunch break; here, these two Israelis of the same age sit on the steps of their trailer, light years away.
�The prime minister should visit,� Alemo says, standing beneath the picture of Ehud Barak
on the flimsy wall of the office. �If they give us the mortgages, we will leave here like the exodus from Egypt.�
As another truck rumbles by outside, Alemo turns, his glance taking in both the road and
the picture of Barak. �They look at us,� he says, �with their eyes closed.�
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