Israel has been suffering its worst bout of inter-communal
violence since the start of the second intifada, with a week of what has been
widely presented as “rioting” by Jewish and Arab residents of the northern port
city of Acre.
The trigger for the outbursts occurred on the night of Yom
Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The
country effectively shuts down for 24 hours as religious Jews fast and abstain
from most activity, leaving secular Jews little choice but to do likewise.
According to reports, an Arab resident, Tawfik Jamal, outraged a
group of Jews by disturbing the day’s sanctity and driving to relatives in a
predominantly Jewish neighbourhood. He and his teenage son were pelted with
stones.
The pair sought sanctuary in the relatives’ home as a mob
gathered outside chanting “Death to the Arabs”. Israeli police who tried to
rescue the family fled when they were attacked, too.
With news of Mr Jamal’s death mistakenly broadcast over mosque
loudspeakers, Arab youths marched to the city centre and smashed shop windows in
a display of anger.
In subsequent days, Jewish gangs have roamed Acre’s streets and
torched several Arab homes, forcing dozens of Arab families living in
Jewish-dominated areas to flee.
An Arab member of the Israeli parliament, Ahmed Tibi, observed
that what is occurring in Acre is not a riot but a “pogrom”, conducted by Jewish
residents against their Arab neighbours.
Communal tensions are always high in the half a dozen “mixed
cities” like Acre, the only places in Israel where Jews and Arabs live in close
proximity, even if in largely separate neighbourhoods.
But the situation has grown especially strained in Acre, where
some Arab residents have escaped the deprivation and overcrowding of their main
neighbourhood, the walled Old City, by moving to Jewish areas. Acre’s Arabs are
also numerically strong, comprising a third of the local population.
Despite pronouncements from Israeli leaders that the violence is
damaging Acre’s image as a model of coexistence, the reality is of a deeply
divided city, where the wounds of the 1948 war have yet to heal.
During the war, most local Palestinians were either killed or
forced to leave, with the remainder penned up in the old city. Jewish
immigrants, brought to settle the empty houses, were encouraged to see
themselves as reclaiming the city for Jews.
In recent years the movement of Arab families into these
“Judaised” neighbourhoods has revived talk of the need for Acre to be cleansed
again of its Arabs.
The problem has been exacerbated by the relocation to Acre of
some of the fanatical settlers withdrawn from Gaza three years ago and by the
founding in 2001 of a hesder yeshiva, a school for religious men that combines
army service.
The police have stated that the violence in Acre caught them by
surprise, but there was little justification for their complacency.
Abbas Zakour, an Arab member of parliament
and an Acre resident, had written to the public security minister days before
Yom Kippur warning that it would offer a pretext for Jewish extremists to attack
Arab residents.
He was concerned that, as in previous years, Jews would throw
stones at Arab cars breaking the unofficial 24-hour curfew in the Galilee
region, where Arabs are a majority. The failure of the police to intervene, he
added, “leads the Arab public to believe that police are deliberately allowing
the young Jews to attack innocent Arab residents who drive by”.
In a society where the grip of Jewish religious fundamentalism is
tightening – stoked by the high birth rate of ultra-Orthodox Jews and the
state’s generous support of a separate religious education system – such
incidents regularly occur on Yom Kippur and less frequently on Saturdays, the
official day of rest.
The local media reported that over Yom Kippur ambulances and
paramedics were stoned. At one point Acre’s ambulance station was surrounded by
Jewish youths who smashed its windows. As a result, the service’s local
director, Eli Been, ordered staff to wear helmets and bulletproof vests.
Given the failure to punish, or even rebuke, Jewish extremists
for such acts of vandalism, it is hardly surprising that in places like Acre
they are emboldened to vent their indignation at Arab neighbours.
What has particularly disturbed the Arab minority, however, has
been the response from politicians and the police to events in Acre.
Israeli leaders have tried to calm tensions by paying lip service
to the idea of coexistence. But at the same time, rather than denouncing the
Jewish mob, they have intimated that Acre’s Arab residents provoked the attacks.
During Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Ehud Olmert, the outgoing prime
minister, stressed, in reference to the Yom Kippur violence, that the wider Arab
population must act “according to the norms of a democratic state”.
His probable successor, Tzipi Livni, added of Yom Kippur that
“every citizen has to respect this day” – a reprimand to Arab citizens for
driving rather than to extremist Jews for turning into a lynch mob.
Such indirect condemnations roused others to greater provocation.
Yuval Steinitz of the Likud Party called the violence a “pogrom” against, rather
than by, Acre’s Jews. The local chief rabbi, Yosef Yashar, compared the city’s
Arabs to Nazis. And on Monday Jewish far-right activists arrived in Acre from
Hebron to stir things further.
Mr Jamal, the hapless driver who provoked the violence, has been
widely blamed – apparently without evidence – for playing his music loudly and
smoking while driving, as though this justified the attack.
He was finally brought before the parliament on Sunday to
demonstrate his contrition. To much abuse from right-wing legislators, he asked
for forgiveness and told the parliament he was ready to “sacrifice his neck” to
restore good relations between the two communities.
The next day the country’s president, Shimon Peres, reminded
community leaders: “There is one law and one police.”
As if to disprove him, the police arrested Mr Jamal the same day,
accusing him of offending religious sensitivities, speeding and reckless
endangerment – though it was unclear whom he had endangered apart from himself.
He was released to house arrest two days later.
Mr Tibi, the parliamentarian, sounded a rare note of sanity when
he observed: “I wonder if they will start to arrest Jews who eat and drink
during the month of Ramadan.”
Meanwhile, Acre’s Jewish residents are organising a boycott of
Arab businesses. They have apparently been joined by the mayor, Shimon Lankri,
who cancelled the annual drama festival due to be held in the Old City in a few
days. His move was widely interpreted as a way to “punish” Arab residents, who
are major beneficiaries of the event.
Articulating popular sentiments, a senior police official told a
local website: “The Arab public will pay dearly for the events of Yom Kippur
eve. They have succeeded in greatly antagonising the Jewish population and I
don’t see them being forgiven for the next few years.”
In what looked like a desperate move to avert further damage to
the Old City’s already weak economy, Arab community leaders issued a
condemnation of Mr Jamal and a plea for tolerance – though the gesture was not
reciprocated by their Jewish counterparts.
Few in the Arab minority share their president’s confidence about
the legal system. They see that there are two sets of laws, one for Jews and
another Arabs, and that the police have two faces, depending on who is doing the
stone-throwing.
They know that when Jewish settlers attack Palestinians in the
West Bank, or even Israeli soldiers, they do so with impunity. Equally, they
remember that in 2005 when a settler opened fire on a bus with his army-issue
gun in the Galilean town of Shefa’amr, killing four Arab citizens, the police’s
priority was chasing the Arab men they suspected had overpowered and killed him.
Even more painful are memories of the events at the beginning of
the intifada, in October 2000, when Arab citizens protested against the military
whirlwind unleashed against their Palestinian kin in the occupied territories.
The worst violence inside Israel occurred at the town of Umm al-Fahm, where Arab
demonstrators threw stones at cars driving along the nearby highway.
Politicians did not talk about Arab sensitivities, or the need
for calm, at that time. Instead they sent in a sniper unit. In the ensuing
crackdown 13 Arab demonstrators were shot dead, and hundreds injured with live
ammunition and rubber bullets.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth,
Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran
and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing
Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is
www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae),
published in Abu Dhabi.
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