A district court in Tel Aviv rejected July 25 a lawsuit filed against the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality by Jewish residents of Jaffa. The case revolved around a new affordable housing project, open exclusively to Arab residents of Jaffa. The court accept the municipality’s argument that the tender was not discriminatory, since the city had the authority to foster and promote racial equality. In other words, preferential treatment of one sector over another in cases such as this would not be considered discriminatory.

To clarify, Jaffa is an ancient city, with a history dating back to the Middle Ages and even before. Tel Aviv was founded at the beginning of the 20th century. Jaffa is a mixed city, with an important Arab population, while Tel Aviv’s population is mostly Jewish. The two cities touch physically, and in 1949 the government decided to unite them in one municipality. Hence the name Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

The recent ruling first surfaced in late April 2021, when the municipality announced that it was opening registration for a lottery to purchase 28 apartments at a reduced price (30% less than market value) in a new housing project slated for 15 Michelangelo Street, in downtown Jaffa. The authorities went on to say that eligibility for the project, which would be ready for occupancy in 2024, would be limited to Arab residents of the city. The five-story project will consist of 32 three-room apartments with an average size of 65-70 square meters (700-753 square feet). Candidates eligible to purchase the properties would be selected by lottery. The four remaining penthouses would then be sold on the open market. The cost of the apartments is expected to average about 1.5 million Israeli shekels ($460,000), whereas a standard three-room apartment in the neighborhood was recently sold for 2.7 million shekels ($831,000), according to Madlan, an Israeli real estate website that offers information about pricing trends in the surrounding area.

It is worth noting that the aforementioned project first made headlines almost a decade ago, in 2012, when the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality released a tender to construct a three-story building of 24 affordable units in Jaffa for eligible residents from the Arab community. When the contract was signed between the city and the contractor in 2016, it was stipulated that the apartments would cost between 700,000 ($215,000) and 1 million shekels ($308,000). Since then, however, the cost of apartments in the area rose drastically. The problem is that this made it increasingly difficult for Arab residents to purchase these apartments, even though they were specifically intended for them.