Negib Berouti’s Vanished Building in Jaffa

I often spend time comparing present-day aerial views of Jaffa from Google Earth with surveys of the city conducted before 1948. I have long known that many Palestinian homes, and even entire neighborhoods such as Manshiyeh, were demolished after 1948, largely to erase the city’s vibrant Palestinian culture and history. One intriguing difference I noticed lies at a specific spot beside Emile Berouti’s house, just across the street from Al-Kamal Pharmacy. I’ve been particularly interested in this corner, knowing that before the Nakba, most members of the Berouti family lived close to one another in the Ajami and Jabal Araktingi neighborhoods.

The image below offers a visual comparison of the spot mentioned above. On the left is a recent satellite image from Google Earth, while on the right is a view of the same section, from a 1944 survey of Jaffa. Emile Berouti’s house, which still stands today, is circled in red on both sides. Interestingly, the structure circled in green, visible in the 1944 survey, no longer exists today.

Side-by-side comparison of a modern aerial view of Jaffa (left) and a 1944 survey map of the same section (right). The green circle on the right image marks the site where Negib Berouti’s house once stood, now visible as an empty lot in the modern image.

Little did I know that, in that exact spot, once stood a mansion that belonged to Negib Berouti, as I later learned from the Geday family of Jaffa. Below is an old photograph of the property, captured by Dutch photographer Frank Scholten and reproduced in an Arabic-language book about Jaffa by the late Fakhri Geday of Al-Kamal Pharmacy. The caption beneath it reads:

“Negib Berouti’s building, which was inhabited by Francis Jallad, the owner of the wheat mill on the Jerusalem Road. Under Israel, it was converted into a police station. Later, during Lahat’s tenure [Shlomo Lahat] as mayor of Tel Aviv–Jaffa, its demolition was ordered. Its location was at the crossroads in front of Al-Kamal Pharmacy.”

Negib Berouti’s mansion in Jaffa, demolished by the Israelis around 1980. Photograph by Frank Scholten, Palästina, Jaffa 2 (1930), photo no. 137, p. 64.

Yousef Geday, Fakhri’s son, recalled that the lot had four large palm trees: two flanking the building’s main entrance façade facing Ajami Street (today called Yefet) and two more along the side facing a perpendicular street now named Sha’arei Nikanor. The property was set back from the road on both sides and sat on higher ground, with ten to twelve steps leading up to the entrances. According to Yousef, his father described the building as massive, with the main living room measuring 13 meters, or 42.6 feet, in length.

Two archival documents from the Jaffa municipality, dated November 26, 1976, and March 12, 1981, and unearthed by the Geday family, shed light on the residence’s fate in the decades following the Nakba. We learn that the building was converted into a school (after having previously served as a police station). The 1976 document describes the building as dilapidated, noting cracked walls and rusty iron bars, among other issues. The second document, from March 1981, mentions that “[...] school building was demolished several months ago”, which allows us to estimate the demolition year as 1980. Many thanks to Fakhri Geday, Yousef’s son and namesake of his late father, for the translation from Hebrew.

Yousef recalled his father telling him that when the building was destroyed, its foundation was so solid that the demolition took nearly a month to complete. In fact, the foundation, the steps leading to the entrance, and the four palm trees were left intact for decades, until November 19, 2008, a date Yousef recorded at the time. On that day, Israelis returned to complete the destruction and erase the remaining visible traces of the building’s existence.

View of the site where Negib Berouti’s building once stood, seen from Sha’arei Nikanor Street on Google Street View, August 2011.

Sadly, the parcel of land where Negib Berouti’s imposing building once stood now serves as a parking lot, as shown in the image below.

The lot where Negib Berouti’s building once stood is now a parking lot, seen from Sha’arei Nikanor Street on Google Street View, August 2022.