http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/show_katava.asp?id=29270&mador=4&datee=10/4/98
Ha'aretz, October 4, 1998
Because it isn't in the public's interest
By Gideon Levy
Four citizens of Israel spent two nights last
weekend rotting in the detention cells of
Jibril Rajoub's preventative security
mechanism, and throughout the country, nobody
twitched. Not one soul raised a peep in
protest. MK Rafik Haj-Yihyeh, who happens to
be their neighbor, was the only one to take an
interest in their fate. Israel's usually
clamorous prime minister, minister of defense
and right-wing leaders had not barely a word
to say on this occasion despite the blatant
breach of Israel's agreements with the
Palestinians.Why? Because these four citizens
were Arabs. That fact suffices to turn them
into utter nonentities. Do we really have to
go into what would have happened on this
occasion if the foursome had been Jews? If one
single Jewish settler had been arrested by the
Palestinian Authority?
About 500 Israeli citizens were wounded last
week by the rough way the police and border
police handled the demonstrations in Umm
al-Fahm. Children streamed blood in the
schools; young and old alike were shot at and
beaten. Not one word disturbed the surface of
Israel's tranquillity. It seems that Israelis
only take an interest in the fate of the
traffic on Wadi Ara Road (which passes by Umm
al-Fahm) en route to their holiday travels.
Another resident of Umm al-Fahm, MK Hashem
Mahameed, was wounded a few months ago in
Hebron by a rock thrown by a settler lady. The
police closed the file on the case because "it
wasn't in the public's interest." But what
happened (and thank heavens that it did) to
the man who tossed tea, at the very same
place, on Jewish MK Yael Dayan? He was
sentenced to three years in the slammer.
The commander of the police's Northern
District, Major General Alik Ron, last week
called the Islamic Movement in Israel an "evil
movement." Is it really necessary to predict
what would have happened if that same police
commander has used the same term to a Jewish
counterpart of this religious movement? And
finally, what would have happened if former
Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak had decided
to appropriate agricultural lands in Hadera or
Gadera instead of those belonging to Umm al
Fahm?
The Jewish population of Israel does not want
to hear anything touching on Israel's
non-Jewish citizens, and certainly not about
their troubles and sorrows. Israeli Arabs are
not evident in any area of Israeli life.
Television talk shows, political appointments,
you name it - not one Arab is to be seen
although they comprise one fifth of the
population. Umm al-Fahm is at most where Beit
Bad is located and olive oil is made, and
Israeli Arabs are perceived as one giant
hummus restaurant. Their crowded conditions,
abandonment by the establishment, national
humiliation and cultural elimination barely
arouse a flicker of interest anywhere.
Did anybody recall last week that not a few
refugees from Lajun, Batimat, Khozobi and
Boishat, which were once the names of villages
in the area that no longer exist, also dwell
in Umm al-Fahm? Jewish towns were built on the
ruins of those towns, leaving their former
residents to make do as best they could in
their misery. Did Chief of Staff Shahak
remember that he was appropriating land from
people who had already lost their whole world,
and most of their lands, once before?
In a situation like this, violence is the only
way that Israel's Arabs can draw attention to
their troubles. They can sit day in and day
out shouting in protest tents set up in the
contested lands, but nobody could care less.
Only the language of the rock and the burning
tire, or perhaps a Molotov cocktail or two,
speak to the Israeli establishment.
In Israel, however, the result of civilian
Jewish violence is not the same as that
perpetrated by Israel's civilian Arabs. The
very same day the demonstrations erupted in
Umm al-Fahm, another frustrated group of
citizens, Jews this time, were protesting
north of there. But it never occurred to
anybody to shoot the protesters from the towns
on Israel's northern front line. Umm al-Fahm
was alone in turning into a war zone.
Channel Two, typically, hurriedly sent off its
military correspondent (!) to the trouble
site, although the conflict involved not one
single soldier. A demonstration by Arabs? War!
Anything goes in war, so be it; and the same
for occupation. The state will teach its Arabs
a lesson or two in Jewish civics: What the
residents of Ofakim can get away with, or the
ultra-Orthodox on Bar-Ilan Street in
Jerusalem, or the residents of settlements
along the northern border is strictly off
bounds for them. Alik Ron and his cops will
show them that Israel is a nation for Jewish
demonstrators only.
This situation is actually bad news for
Israel. When a sovereign nation treats one of
its sovereign areas like an occupation zone,
say Zone B, to use the words of Ahmed Tibi,
and treats its own citizens like an enemy only
because of their nationalist affiliation, then
one must expect the residents of that area to
behave accordingly. In other words, Commander
Ron's policemen, and mainly the people who
sent them, revived a terrible scenario last
week that we have experienced before: with
their brutality, they returned the town of Umm
al-Fahm to the late, unmourned days of the
military occupation, and forced its residents
into the embrace of nationalism. If they
persist in their methods, they could yet
return the people of Umm al-Fahm, and all of
us, to the borders of 1947 and the plan to
split the country.
Does that sound too harsh? Those authorities
who torment these people, who have been
astonishingly, often inconceivably, loyal to
the state, and appropriate more and more of
their lands, shoot their children and spray
gas on their aged, are personally shoving them
willy-nilly toward extremism and nationalism.
Let us not forget that Umm al-Fahm is only
five minutes away from the Green Line. They
passed through the Intifada in a silence that
infuriated their brothers across the line. But
an Israel that insists on treating them like
an occupied population is doomed to find
itself with a Wadi Ara region turning into an
occupation zone. And the fate of occupation
zones, Commander Ron and his senders should be
reminded, is to become free one day.
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