Jewish Israeli rioters in Acre confronting border police officers.
The AIC Condemns Israeli
Violence against Palestinians in Acre, Demands
that Israeli Government End Discrimination of Palestinian Citizens, Economic
Disenfranchisement of the Country’s Periphery that Underlie Violence
The
Alternative Information
Center (AIC) utterly condemns the
Israeli violence against Palestinian residents of the city of Acre, violence which commenced with the
stoning of a Palestinian driving his car on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (8
October) and has continued since with rioting, stone throwing and the wanton
destruction of Palestinian property in the city.
The
presence of thousands of Israeli police over the weekend served to temporarily
calm the situation in Acre, where approximately 15 percent of the residents are
Palestinian citizens of Israel. However, it is doubtful that the Israeli
government will take the steps necessary to deal with the underlying causes of
such violence—the systemic discrimination by the state of Israel of its
Palestinian citizens and the rising impoverishment and marginalization of large
swathes of Israeli society, which is now the most unequal in the world. Acre, a
peripheral city with high levels of unemployment and poverty, has suffered
substantially from Israel’s war against and criminalization of the country’s
economically impoverished, begun by then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli
politicians visited Acre over the weekend, including the probable next prime
minister, Tzipi Livni and Public Security Minister, Avi Dichter. Although the
police commander of the northern district, Brigadier General Shimon Koren, noted
in an interview
with Israeli news portal Ynet that “the dominant elements behind the riots in
Akko [Acre] seem to be Jewish instigators,” Livni criticized “vandals from both sides” and
Prime Minister Olmert stated that “in the State of Israel there is a national
minority which constitutes almost 20 percent of Israel's residents, and it must
create a space for itself according to the rules of living in a democratic
country, as we believe we have to and need to do."
This
blasphemous claim against the entire Palestinian population of Israel for the
violence perpetuated by Jewish residents of Acre over the past five days demonstrates
that Israel has not yet internalized the reasons for, and ramifications of, the
October 2000 killing of 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel by Israeli police,
and the recommendations of the Or Commission report that was issued in its
wake.
The
Israeli dynamics of Jewish nationalism, Israeli dispossession of and
discrimination against Palestinian citizens and the crushing impoverishment of
a majority of Acre’s residents, Jewish and Palestinian, creates a certain
recipe for violence. It is incumbent upon the government of Israel to directly
confront these issues. If not, the next outbreak of violence is only a matter
of time.
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