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# Marseille's mix said to spare it strife ## Diversity called shield from riots By Daniel Williams, Washington Post | November 17, 2005 MARSEILLE -- While several other cities were under curfew this weekend to curb violence and while riot police set up their defenses in central Paris, a North African wedding party sped around the harbor at Marseille's Old Port, horns blaring and men hanging out car windows. Moments later, several hundred demonstrators, some pale French, others black Africans, marched to protest censorship in Tunisia. No police were in sight. The very presence of such an ethnic collage in the central areas of many French cities during nearly three weeks of rioting might have been cause for alarm. But Marseille's core is a spicy stew of nationalities, giving it a make-up like no other city in France. The mixture is one answer to the question posed over and over in recent weeks: Why has their town had relatively little trouble? ''It's the special quality of Marseille," said Dia Ghazi, a Palestinian-born owner of the Royal Bazaar, a hodgepodge of made-in-France textiles and and pine nuts from the Middle East. ''Here, we all have contact with each other," Gazi said. ''That's the way it's always been here. We are not separate from each other." In relative terms, Marseille suffered little violence during the flare-up that shook France. One night, arsonists torched 35 cars, but that was about the extent of the unrest. Around Paris and other French cities, such vandalism occurred almost nightly. That's not to say that all is well. A trip to the northern neighborhood of Oliviers reflected the same depressed social and economic conditions found in some of the suburbs of Paris, Toulouse, Lyon and other tense cities. Residents complain of police harassment based on skin color, of joblessness, and substandard schooling. But the sentiment is that people feel at home here, and that was why Marseille did not burn. ''We have our troubles, but I can go to the center of the city without thinking I am entering enemy territory," said Abida Hecini, a mother of six. History is one source of this relative stability. While other cities in France fret about the arrival of immigrants Marseille has been a magnet for outsiders: Italians fleeing poverty, Greeks and Armenians escaping wars, Moroccan sailors jumping ship, Spanish smugglers looking for a haven, Europeans returning from France's former Algerian colony, and impoverished Algerians themselves seeking work. In addition, a substantial Jewish community exited Algeria and settled here. ''Marseille was made by immigration," said Pierre Échinard, a historian. Of a population of 800,000, a quarter is of North African descent. ''I dislike going to Paris. They are cold there. A few days, and I want to return," said Ghazi, whose family fled Haifa, which became part of Israel, landed in Beirut in 1948, and migrated to Marseille.

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