Palestinians argue with right-wing Israelis in the Old City of Jaffa during last year's election campaign. (Maan Images)

Last year, in the wake of the Lebanon war, Israel's foreign minister Tzippi Livni launched a public relations campaign to spread a "more inviting" image of Israel abroad.

Its fruits were on display during last week's normalised coverage of the Israel-England football match, and in the news that Israel's US consulate had successfully persuaded Maxim magazine to promote tourism by publishing a feature about the country's stunning models. Maxim is now reportedly sending a team of top photographers to the beaches of Tel Aviv and Jaffa.

While they are there, perhaps they will incidentally record what could be the final days of the 497 residential properties that are slated for demolition in Ajami, Jaffa's last predominantly Arab district. According to Fady Shbita of the Arab-Jewish Sadaka-Reut ("Friendship") organisation, as many as 2,000 people could be affected.

"There will be a serious struggle over this because it will change the whole structure of Jaffa if it succeeds," he told me. "I would characterise it as a combination of ethnic cleansing or transfer and gentrification." Most people in Ajami just call it ethnic cleansing.

The Palestinian-Israelis who live in Ajami will not be re-housed in Tel Aviv. Even if they could afford the rents here, it's all but unheard of for Arabs to live in most parts of the city. They won't receive compensation either, as they have technically been living in Ajami 'illegally' for decades.

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Before 1948, more than 70,000 Palestinians lived in Jaffa. During the Naqba, the majority fled and were not allowed to return. Under the Absentee Property Act of 1950, their abandoned houses were seized by the new Israeli state and rented to Jews. The few Arabs who remained were concentrated behind a fence in Ajami.

But times change. The fence came down and, in the 1970s, when beachfront property prices began to rise, Tel Aviv's Mayor, Shlomo "Cheech" Lahat, announced a policy of "Judaising" Jaffa. Building permits in Ajami were frozen and ongoing demolitions funnelled residents into the slums of Lyd and Ramle.

Many of the 15,000-20,000 Palestinian-Israelis who stayed in Jaffa were forced to build extensions to their family houses without permits. This practice is now being used as the excuse by the Israeli Lands Authority, a state actor which owns the properties for a new wave of the sort of soulless gentrification and transfer that has hollowed out Jaffa's old town.

Much of the land reclaimed by house demolitions invariably gets sold on for luxury developments like the gated community of Andromeda Hill, "a virtual 'city within a city' surrounded by a wall and secured 24 hours a day," according to its website. Local residents complain that Andromeda Hill was built on land which was formerly owned by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate "so that rich Jews can enjoy the magic of the sunset in Jaffa without seeing Arabs".

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