Washington Report, November 2005, pages 18, 21

Special Report

Not Welcome Here: Attacks on Palestinians in Israel Continue

By Isabelle Humphries

	Blue-shirted drivers for the Israeli bus company Egged walk behind the coffin of their colleague, Michel Bahout, who was killed in the Aug. 4 attack on his bus by an Israeli soldier (Photo I. Humphries).

CONTRARY to what the Israeli and international media would like one to believe, attacks on Palestinian “citizens” of Israel are not isolated incidents resulting from the warped minds of extremists. Rejection of the indigenous population of the land is only a natural consequence of the Zionist system in which all Israelis are, consciously or unconsciously, brought up. Every incident, from the fatal shooting of four Palestinians on a bus in Shefa Amr to the symbolic throwing of a pig’s head into a mosque in Jaffa, is part of a systematic policy of exclusion of Arab citizens in Israel’s very definition as a Jewish state.

Shefa Amr is a small mixed town of Muslim, Christian and Druze Arabs, home to some of the 150,000 Palestinians who succeeded in remaining inside Israeli borders after the expulsion of the majority of the Palestinian community in 1948. As with most of the underdeveloped Arab communities in Israel, there is little reason anyone from outside would enter; lack of employment opportunities drive most residents to commute to work in neighboring Jewish towns and cities such as Haifa. That was what drew the attention of the bus passengers on that fateful Aug. 4 to the presence of an armed Jewish soldier in their midst. The following day, a Friday, thousands of Palestinians from inside Israel (and an almost negligible number of Jews) flocked to the town to mourn the gunman’s victims; two young women (sisters), and two middle-aged men gunned down on a bus in the middle of their own town.

While any explosion in a Jewish town is instantly labeled a Palestinian “terror attack,” the international media took their time to label it as such in an Arab town. Initial reports, including those on the BBC, focused on what was labeled a “lynching,” the killing of the gunman by an angry and fearful crowd after he already had killed four and wounded many others. The killing of an Arab attacker in the reverse situation is not similarly labeled, for it is usually committed by a trained Israeli security officer, generally seen as above the law or suspicion.

Living in neighboring Arab Nazareth, I have to say that, sadly, in this land of hatred and suspicion, the only thing that really shocks me is that such an incident has not happened before. Any Israeli—Muslim, Christian or Jewish—can open a newspaper or switch on the television and read about the latest tightening of discriminatory policies, or hear Israeli public figures and politicians advocating the transfer of Arab citizens across the borders. Arabs and Jews are largely segregated. Even in so-called mixed towns such as Haifa, Arabs live in poorer, ghetto-style neighborhoods. In the “mixed” city of Lod—formerly the Arab city of Lydda—a wall is being assembled so that Jews will be able to buy homes in a new apartment block without seeing the poverty and squalor of the Arab neighborhood on the other side. In the 29 Jewish villages built in the past decades in the hills of the Galilee, not one Arab resident has been allowed to move in. While Arab community leaders often are accused of incitement against Jews, the whole Israeli system perpetuates racism against the Arab community.

In the aftermath of the killings in Shefa Amr, Arab community leaders have once more tried to draw attention to the link between the overall culture of distrust and exclusion with the acts of individuals. “We are living in a society that is not secure, leaving us constantly scared of what the future will bring,” reads the statement from Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community Based Associations. “While some are hesitating to make this link we feel that it is clear that this person has made a connection between the disengagement plans and the area of Galilee and the Nagab (Negev). This background of tension and racism toward Israeli Arabs has led to this attack…This is not an isolated incident [but a] sign of what is to come, as this soldier is clearly not alone in his beliefs.”

Arab politicians demanded answers as to why, despite known connections with extremist groups, this army deserter was still in possession of his government-issued weapon.

Two weeks later, a pig’s head with the words “The Prophet Muhammad” in Arabic, and a keffiyeh and prayer beads wrapped around it, was thrown into a mosque in Jaffa. (Still home to many Palestinians, today’s Jaffa is little more than a rundown neighborhood of Tel Aviv; a far cry from the flourishing port city of pre-1948). Once again the Israeli press labeled the  perpetrators as members of the “lunatic fringe.” The Palestinian community, secular and religious, did not see it that way, however, viewing it instead as yet another assault on the community. On the following Friday, Muslims gathered in the mosque to hear, among others, Islamic Movement leader Sheikh Riad Saleh of Umm Al Fahem. Saleh recently has been released from over two years’ imprisonment for allegedly funding “terror” in the West Bank. Respected by secular and religious, Muslim and Christian alike, his is a genuine voice of leadership in the community. It is yet to be seen what restrictions Israel will enforce against him following his release.

For weeks prior to the Gaza disengagement, Jewish Israelis protested en masse against the removal of settlers from Gaza. and there have been no serious injuries Aside from the woman who set fire and killed herself in protest, the protesters—not to mention the illegal settlers—suffered no serious injuries. Yet when Arab Israelis took to their own streets in October 2002 to protest the killing of fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli police, operating on shoot-to-kill orders, killed 13 of them in the space of a week. Arab life is cheap here, and a citizen like the deserter Eden Natan-Zada would know that.

Despite the catastrophe of six decades ago, the majority of Palestinians living in Israel today wish to see a peace based on two states; a solution in which they would remain as Israeli citizens. But even in the seemingly impossible event of a genuinely independent West Bank and Gaza, ongoing racism within Israeli society and discriminatory government policies prevent the establishment of peace and equality inside Israel itself.

Whatever “terror” or “loner” spin the Israeli government and media would like to put on it, the killer Eden Natan-Zada was not a freak individual, but the product of a racist society and a racist education. The fact that not all Israelis take such extreme and brutal actions does not mean the culture of racism in Israel is not to blame. And until that inherent racism is challenged, the weakest communities will continue to be the victims, whatever citizenship is written on their ID cards.

Isabelle Humphries lives in Nazareth, conducting doctoral research on the contemporary narrative of internally displaced Palestinians in the Galilee. She can be contacted at < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >.