Summary and Overview – Sami Al-Ali
Since the Palestinian Nakba, the village of Jisr al-Zarqa has lived under a tightly enforced geographical siege. It is surrounded on all four sides: to the north, it is bordered by an Israeli nature reserve and Ma’agan Michael Kibbutz, one of the most powerful and wealthiest communities in Israel. To the east lies the Haifa–Tel Aviv highway, running directly alongside residents’ homes and lacking basic safety and security standards. Over the years, this road has witnessed numerous pedestrian accidents, most of them involving residents of the village.
To the south, the village is enclosed by the wall separating it from the affluent city of Caesarea. The wall was erected in November 2002, reaches approximately 10 meters in height, and extends for about 1,500 meters. It could be described as the first apartheid wall erected by Israeli governments to separate Arab towns from Palestinian towns, predating the construction of the separation wall in the occupied West Bank.
To the west lies the Mediterranean Sea, which is effectively the residents’ only outlet and breathing space. As one young man from the village told me, “The sea is a glimmer of hope for us.”
Despite all these restrictions, the village is facing four new Israeli planning schemes aimed at transforming this geography into a place unfit for habitation and devoid of the most basic necessities of life.
First Plan: The Comprehensive Structural Plan
This plan aims to expand the geographical siege. It is a government plan known as the “Comprehensive Structural Plan.” Under this plan, the government uses the planning process as a means of confiscating land from the village and incorporating it into colonial projects undertaken by the state, thereby tightening the siege imposed on the village.
One of the methods used by the state in this regard is expanding areas allocated to serve neighboring Jewish communities under the pretext of facilitating transportation and mobility, at the expense of residents. This is despite the fact that the village needs approximately 2,000 dunams to develop and expand over the coming years.
However, the plan being implemented by the state does not meet the needs of the village’s residents at all. Rather, it completely ignores them and effectively expands the geographical siege, allocating only a few additional dunams to the village—an amount that will not resolve the worsening housing crisis.
Second Plan: West of the Bridge
This plan is known as “Price for the Resident” and is a residential, tourism, and commercial development scheme aimed at taking over approximately 300 dunams of village land located just meters from the beach. Israel had seized these lands in 1948 and has prevented residents from building on them ever since.
In 2015, Israel launched a new plan west of the village, known as “West of the Bridge,” which includes a residential project to build 530 housing units for young couples. The project overlooks the sea, but the conditions attached to ownership are prohibitive and beyond the means of young couples, particularly because of the high prices.
As a result, the dream of homeownership has become increasingly distant for young couples. Moreover, these conditions do not correspond to the reality of life in the village. No young person can realistically meet them, or even come close to meeting the requirements needed to purchase an apartment.
Third Plan: The Mwaris Lands
This is a plan imposed by Israel on residents over the past two years, as part of its new policies of confiscating land owned by Palestinians in Arab communities.
Under the plan, Israel seeks to confiscate approximately 60% of the residents’ privately owned agricultural land, covering about 130 dunams, under the pretext of “the public interest” and in order to expand the nature reserve and protect a section of Nahal Taninim (Crocodile Stream), which borders the land, as well as nearby archaeological sites.
Following the plan, the landowners began a long struggle to amend it, reduce the large percentage of land subject to confiscation, and challenge the construction conditions, divisions, and forms of development imposed by the plan. The struggle is still ongoing.
Fourth Plan: Erasing the Arab Identity of the Beach
Implementation of this plan began in 2015. It aims to transform Jisr al-Zarqa’s beach into a single Israeli nature reserve extending along the coastline.
In practice, the plan seeks to erase the Arab-Palestinian identity of Jisr al-Zarqa’s beach and demolish the Arab fishermen’s village, which consists of approximately 36 fishermen’s huts belonging to residents of the village and has existed for decades.
This project takes away land available to residents and threatens fishing, one of the most important livelihoods of the local population and one of the factors contributing to their resilience. In practice, the project seeks to confiscate their rights and remove their control over the place in favor of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, allowing it to manage the site and determine the regulations and form of development of the fishermen’s village, while imposing restrictions on the village’s fishermen and their maritime fishing activities.
This is despite the fact that fishing constitutes a family heritage passed down from one generation to another for many residents of the village.
The residents of the fishermen’s village are currently living with deep anxiety over their future, as the planning authorities have given final approval to the plan. The fishermen are using every means available to preserve this popular and historical heritage and save a profession they have inherited from an early age.
This sector also constitutes an essential part of the village’s collective identity and of how its residents define themselves through their connection to fishing as part of their historical, cultural, social, and economic identity. Fishing has supported them throughout years of injustice and discrimination, enabled them to remain on their land, and helped prevent the displacement of the village and its erasure from the map.
