Israeli police forces out on the streets in the northern city of Acre, where rioting has continued for three consecutive nights.
"Riots in Acre"—screamed the Israeli dailies
today. They should have written instead "Pogrom in Acre," for what
occurred last Wednesday was exactly a pogrom, of the kind Jews have suffered in
the Tsarist Empire: a fanatic mob attacking a minority under the pretext of
violating the holiness of a religious feast, with the passive complicity of the
state police.
Acre is a “mixed” city, populated by Palestinians and
Jews in the north of Israel, where poor Jews were settled in the homes left by
the majority of the Arab population who were forced out in 1948, largely to
nearby Lebanon. A small minority of indigenous Palestinians remained in the
city, and in the last three decades, this minority was strengthened by
Palestinian villagers who immigrated to the city after their lands were
expropriated by Israel in order to "Judaize the Galilee." Jews and Palestinian
citizens of Israel are living together in the impoverished neighborhoods of Acre
but, unlike what Acre Mayor Shimon Lankri is claiming, there is no coexistence
between them.
Acre suffers from one of the highest rates of
unemployment in Israel,
and one can see in the town center as well as in the suburbs, groups of young
Israelis going around with nothing to do. This was especially true during the
recent holiday of Yom Kippur, when everything was closed.
Attacking an Arab who was driving to visit his
relatives and burning houses of Arab families can be a way for Israeli youth to
spend time until the cafes reopen after the end of the fast. In addition, it
has the added advantage of being a patriotic act: punishing those who don't
respect the holiness of Yom Kippur. The passivity of the Israeli police forces
should be denounced, and thankfully no one was killed as in October 2000.
Although the Israeli media is describing the Acre
events as a confrontation between groups of young Jews and young Arabs, the
reality is that a Jewish mob attacked the Arabs but, unlike in other towns,
young Arabs in Acre are also organized into groups,
and therefore they were able to counter-attack.
Poverty and national tension are an explosive
cocktail, and one can expect that such confrontations may also occur in Ramleh
and Lod. After the Israeli massacres of October 2000, the Orr Commission put
its finger on 50 years of Israeli discrimination of the Palestinian minority in
the state, and made several recommendations aimed at altering this explosive
situation. Nothing was done: no wonder that an Israeli journalist
is warning today about a “Bosniazation” of the situation. When political
pressures and social mobilizations prove ineffective in brining about the
necessary changes, riots will be the way to raise the demand for justice and
equality.
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