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A cellular antenna was placed by one of the Israeli telephone companies
on the roof of a private house in the middle of a residential area. The local
residents decided to act in a way that they thought would best protect their
environment and health, and burned down the antenna. Nothing special about this.
It has happened many times before, and for years, the telephone companies have often
taken into consideration the citizens’ concerns and placed their antennas in a
manner that minimized the potential for harm to public health. That is, except
in Arab localities.
At the beginning of last week in Pekiin, an Arab township in the Galilee (where several Jewish families are also living),
local residents forcefully removed the offending cellular antenna. Hundreds of
armed police officers entered the town, using massive violence including live
ammunition, in order to arrest local residents suspected of having burned the
antenna. Despite the fact that this time no one was killed, everyone in Israel connects
the police intervention in Pekiin to the October 2000 massacre, and rightly so.
Yet, as a Haaretz editorial notes (1 November): “This was not a
demonstration repressed by live bullets instead of other non-lethal means, as
in October 2000, but an operation aimed at arresting suspects. A regular police
operation.”
“Regular police operation”? Definitively not: there have been many other
situations in the past in which a severe law violation occurred, but where the
police have not employed such force. Even the Haaretz editorial, which
supports the police behavior, expresses some concerns about the decision of the
Israeli police commander of the northern district: “There are some disturbing
questions: what are the police criteria in trying to implement the law by
force, and in what cases do the police initiate an arrest-operation with
extreme force, like in Pekiin, the day before yesterday? In Beit Shemesh there
is daily violence, with massive participation, violence that includes the
throwing of stones, attacks on property and burning of cars. Until now,
however, the police didn’t take any serious initiative against the religious
extremists [who are using these violent means in Beit Shemesh, MW]. Nor against
the settlers who are destroying Arab properties.”
This editorial of Haaretz reflects most of the Israeli media, as
well as a large number of Israeli politicians from every party, and it seems a
rather positive reaction. With one important reservation: all the media reports
emphasize the fact that the population of Pekiin is Druze and Christian. Good
Arabs, not like the Muslims who constitute the great majority of the
Palestinian-Arab population of Israel.
Like any apartheid regime, the Israeli one is based on a systematized
hierarchy: on the top are the Jewish citizens of the Jewish State, then a
minority of natives who are considered to be loyal, and, on the bottom, the
great majority of the natives who are treated as the enemies from within—as was
confirmed in October 2000.
In the Jewish State, however, whoever is not Jewish cannot be a truly
equal citizen, even if he is loyal and serves (like most of the Druze) in the
Israeli military. The Druze population of Pekiin just experienced this once
again.
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