Making Revolutions

"Haifa is a center for Arabs, like Tel Aviv is a center for Jews."
"There is a cultural movement. There is a youth movement. There's a kind of freedom here. We have our own parties. Our own places. Our own discos. We dance. We drink."
"We do it all in Arabic."
Asil Abu Wardeh, Haifa, Israel

[And do 'we' give credit where it is due?]

"We want a gay couple to go to the dance floor and kiss each other, and nobody to even look at them."
"This is the new Palestinian society we are aiming for."
Ayed Fadel, owner, Kabareet (bar), Haifa

The Kabareet bar in Haifa, Israel. “We want a gay couple to go to the dance floor and kiss each other, and nobody to even look at them,” said Ayed Fadel, who runs the bar. “This is the new Palestinian society we are aiming for.” Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times

"The people in Haifa, especially in these cafes, they are making revolutions."
"I am for people’s freedoms, social, personal and individual, and you can’t divide that up. You can’t just not accept queer people. I believe in freedom for the Palestinian people, so we also have to support personal freedoms."
Samer Asakleh, 23, from the village of Mughar, Galilee

In the Hadar neighbourhood of this Israeli port city women wander into Elika, a bar where they feel comfortable ordering an afternoon beer. Other women sit in the bar, one distinguished by a shaved head and tattoos, another with her father, a film maker and actor. This is where the 'cool' Palestinians of a brave new order assemble to socialize and feel comfortable in a milieu unlike any that exist outside of Israel in the Middle East.

Of Israel's population of eight million, Arabs represent a fifth. Israeli Palestinians assert themselves as clearly Arab, with their feelings of solidarity with the Palestinians living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. This, overlooking the reality that Palestinians living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, with some rare exceptions, view their social/cultural lifestyle with aghast contempt.

But Haifa's prevailing social order is a liberal one in a cosmopolitan setting where  young singles can get out and do their thing without fear of  repression.

Jews tend to live on the heights of the coastal city built on a hill, and Arabs tend to live by the sea. It is a city of 280,000 souls boasting several universities and an acceptance of diversity. The Arab residents number 30,000 representing equal numbers of Muslims and Christians, who tend to be wealthier and better educated than their Arab brethren elsewhere in Israel.

"If you are in an Arab neighbourhood, you have a community. If you live in a Jewish neighbourhood, you're a stranger, and that gives you freedom as an Arab woman", says Fidaa Hammoud, 32, the owner of a cafe. The first Palestinian gay film festival, Kooz Queer, took place in Haifa last year, where some of the bars and cafes catering to Palestinians held screenings.

Where elsewhere in the Arab world it is criminally scandalous when men and women drink alcohol and flirt, since 1998 with the opening of a Palestinian restaurant, Fattoush, all that has changed. More Arab owned businesses opened on Ben Gurion Boulevard, the main street in Haifa, after Fattoush's appearance and burgeoning popularity. There is signage welcoming people in Arabic, English and occasionally Hebrew.

While expressing solidarity with other Palestinians outside their comfortable little social enclave, one can only wonder whether these gay young people flirting with one another, enjoying life without concerning themselves that the life they are enjoying can merit the death penalty in Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran, are aware that they owe their freedom to live openly as they wish, to the Jewish state in which they enjoy citizenship?

Outside the Elika cafe and bar in Haifa. "The people in Haifa, especially in these cafes, they are making revolutions," one patron said. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times