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The only thing we have to fear By Lily Galili Tags: Israel, Israeli Arab Fear. That is what unites Israelis of different religions and lifestyles. Fear is the primary unifying force of Israeliness. There is not only fear of the obvious - of Qassam rockets in the south, a renewed onslaught of Katyusha rockets in the north, an impending terrorist attack. Above all, there is the fear of one another: the Jews fear the Arabs, the Arabs fear the Jews, the Christians fear the Druze, the Druze fear the Muslims, citizens fear cops and cops fear citizens. Every conceivable variation. Sometimes it is repressed, sometimes it dominates, but it is spreading like an untreated illness. In the absence of a leadership that knows how to deal with this malignant tumor, Israel's government might as well be accused of medical malpractice. Advertisement In the Negev, we encountered this fear in a small computer-repair store in the Bedouin settlement of Kuseife. The day before we got there, the Knesset held a special emergency session, initiated by MK Israel Hasson (Yisrael Beiteinu), former deputy chief of the Shin Bet security service. For the discussion, on "Protecting the Rights of the Jewish Majority in the Negev and Galilee," Hasson commissioned a poll, which was conducted by Dr. Udi Lebel of the Ariel University Center of Samaria and Sapir Academic College. Five hundred people were asked to answer one question: "Do you think that by Israel's 80th anniversary, a security fence will be erected in the Negev between Jewish and non-Jewish settlements, as happened in Judea and Samaria?" About one-third of the participants answered in the affirmative; the strongest believers in the accuracy of this prediction were the younger participants, 18-34 years old, Mizrahi (Jews of Middle Eastern descent), and those of average income. Surprisingly, the rate among the inhabitants of central and northern Israel is higher than among the residents of southern Israel. Based on the phrasing of the question, the participants were not asked to express a position, but rather to voice an assessment of the situation. If they had been asked to express their wishes, the results might have been even more dramatic. "We built a security fence," says Nissim Nir, a spokesman and adviser of Pini Badash, the head of the Omer regional council. "Other settlements followed in Omer's footsteps. If the government does not take action, it will become necessary to build a fence around Be'er Sheva. In the meantime, I'm already hearing of cars with reinforced glass [against attacks] driving on our roads, such as the Shoket-Arad road or the Be'er Sheva-Dimona road. People just don't like to talk about it. The fencing and the reinforced glass are not a solution, but ignoring the problem is also a kind of fear." Sitting in his store with nothing to do, Osama Azbarga says angrily that raising the question itself is incendiary. In any case, they are the ones who are afraid. Mohammed Azbarga, who dropped in on the store, s+ays that every time he goes shopping in Be'er Sheva, he can feel the Jews stare at him in fear. Their fear frightens him; he feels they would prefer to do without his money, as long as he stays away. And they, the Bedouin, have their own fears. Not so much the fear of losing the land, which has already been taken away, but the fear that matters will become still worse. The Jews in the Negev, meanwhile, look anxiously at the Bedouin settlement of Hora, which by now borders on the main road to Arad. "We've already erected a kind of fence around us," says a resident of the Shalom region, who wished to remain anonymous. "Some of our farmers pay money [on the side] to prevent agricultural theft. Recently a man drove around in a jeep in the Bedouin settlements and gave out money. It turned out he was sent by the Arab League, and the money was meant to ensure a Palestinian-Bedouin territorial continuum from the Egyptian border to the Jordanian one. The police ignored the complaint. Yesterday I went to visit my brother in Arad. The territorial continuum exists already. We are gradually losing the Negev." Meanwhile, the Bedouin are being lost as citizens. The last two Bedouin soldiers killed in the line of duty were buried in their settlements with the explicit request that their names not be released to the public. They were afraid of their own neighbors. Enlisting in the Israel Defense Forces and dying in its ranks is a very unpopular choice these days. Osama, 31, understands the families. He himself admits that today he would not have enlisted. Recently the graves of Bedouin soldiers in the Negev were desecrated. Not by foreigners, by their own brothers. When we join Salam A bu Juda for a brief tour of the area, the sources of rage become easier to understand. The 21-year-old takes us to the piles of rubble that used to be his new home. Salam is the cousin of one of the Bedouin trackers who were killed in Gaza last month. The order to demolish his home was issued shortly after his cousin died defending the country. Was this home part of the "territorial continuum"? Within the atmosphere of mutual suspicion and fear, facts do not mean very much. During the discussion in the Knesset, there were reports of reinforced buses driving to Arad, and Bedouin bringing old washing machines to the roadside late at night to cause accidents. The Bedouin, for their part, claim the road is neglected and they have been abandoned to their fates. Fear has become a reality that does not require proof. Prof. Gideon Biger, the geographer who helped former prime minister Ehud Barak draw up the maps for the Camp David Summit and assisted Avigdor Lieberman in preparing his "Umm al-Fahm First" plan, said once that the Bedouin would eventually be annexed by the Palestinian state. Not such a 'bubble' From the south we went to central Israel. As the Knesset discussion was held under the heading "Protecting the Rights of the Jewish Majority in the Negev and Galilee," it suggests there is no problem in the center of the country; the center, as we know, is a "bubble," insular and oblivious. Depends where. Geographically, nothing could be more "central" than the city of Lod; socially, nothing could be more peripheral. Here, too, fear is as tangible as the fence that separates the Arab Harakevet neighborhood from Moshav Nir Zvi; just like the fence in nearby Ramle, which separates the Jawarish neighborhood from that of Ganei Dan. On the Jawarish side of the fence, someone has drawn a swastika. On the Jewish side, the fence has been draped with barbed wire. At the Shomer Israel synagogue in Ramat Eshkol, a neighborhood of Lod, we met Daniel Shalov. More than 20 years after immigrating to Israel, he now finds himself living in a mixed neighborhood. More than half of its residents are Arab. "We are afraid," he says. "They throw rocks at us, harass the girls, spit at us in the street. We call the police and they don't come. Look around you - people shut themselves up at home, they don't even go out at night. Recently we've had some 'Talibans' here. These are hard-core Islamists, they walk around in special clothes. It doesn't make us feel too good." At the other end of Lod, in the Ganei Aviv neighborhood, Irena, too, is trapped at home each night. The neighborhood, populated mainly by elderly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, skirts the Arab Harakevet neighborhood. The people of Ganei Aviv, especially the senior citizens among them, have a self-imposed curfew beginning at around 6 P.M. "In the evening I just sit at home and watch movies," Irena says. "From the window I see Arabs, and I am afraid." Eyewitnesses, some of them Arabs who wished to remain anonymous, say that during the evening hours small gangs of young men wander through the Jewish neighborhood, badgering girls, pushing the elderly. Once, the locals say, children used to play in the neighborhood mall; but no more. Today even the security guard at the mall is afraid of the gangs and tends to disappear when they arrive. "Ganei Aviv is now what Ramat Eshkol has long been, and one of the city leaders has even suggested that the Jews should be evacuated from Ramot. But that's exactly what the Arabs want - for us to run away," says a local activist about Lod's vicious cycle of fear. The Arab inhabitants of the Harakevet neighborhood, a hot spot of Israeli drug trafficking, admit that there is a problem. We have this conversation on the stairs of the handsome house of Hamuda Zeytun, a local young baron of sorts. "I feel that the Jews are afraid," says his friend, Hussein Elsawi. "They really do disappear from the street at 6 P.M. There's something to that. We have kids who bother them out of jealousy and racism. But we are afraid, too. We try to stay out of the Jewish neighborhoods. I know they hate us there. There's a Chabad neighborhood nearby that's almost dangerous for us to enter. Recently one of our kids went there, and they threw rocks at him." Zeytun has another problem. He is a large man, aware of the impression his size makes. "I feel that the Jews are especially afraid of me," he says. "I see a woman grab hold of her child when I pass by. It's insulting, but I'm used to it by now." They find the separation fence being built on their doorstep harder to get used to. "They act like we are from the territories," they say. On the Jewish side of the narrow passageway where the fence has already been built, a sign has been posted: "Dear taxi driver/citizen: You are in a place where drug trafficking takes place. To avoid arrest and unpleasantness, please leave this area." In truth, the appeal might have been shortened to "Beware, Arabs." But the Arabs, on their part, want a warning sign against the police. "Lod is a nightmare for the police," they say. "We've traumatized them, so in response they harass us all the time. The policemen have really become criminals, torturing people. It's scary to leave the house." Christian vs. Druze At the Knesset discussion, Shmuel Rifman, who heads the umbrella organization of regional councils, argued that the session should allude not to "the rights of the Jewish majority in the Negev and Galilee" but to "the rights of the Jewish minority." MK Hasson drew a grim picture: "Adalah [The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel] is running the country, and it won't be long before it declares autonomy in the Galilee." The state, which abandoned its citizens during the Second Lebanon War, is still absent, leaving behind communities that regard each other with hostility and fear. Ahmed Milham, whose nephew, Nadim Milham, was killed by a policeman in his home in Arara, says that local youths are still traumatized by the case. Nadim's pointless death (which is still the subject of legal proceedings) settled on top of the fear that the events of October 2000 left among Israel's Arab citizens. "We used to live in Hadera," says Milham, chairman of the popular committee against house demolitions. "Now we go to Hadera for errands, but we don't stay there to walk around. We hurry back. We're scared of the police, scared of Jewish society. It's especially true of our younger people, and so it bodes ill for the future." Fear is not found exclusively on the Jewish-Arab axis. In the Christian neighborhood in the village of Maghar, you can still see the burnt stores left behind by the pogrom the Druze neighbors committed against the local Christians. The smell of fire is still in the air. Some of the Christian store owners have moved their businesses elsewhere. Certain Christian families have not returned to Maghar. In the face of this lasting monument to the failure of coexistence, Wael Tanus, a Christian, and Naim Askella, a Druze, are trying to forge a new kind of partnership. After that trauma, they joined forces to open a state-of-the-art fitness center. Opening the business at this time required the courage of a former "Mr. Israel." For training sessions, they carefully match Druze with Christians, Christians with Muslims. "It will take years to forget," says Askella. The Muslims, a minority in Maghar, look on from the sidelines. They tell the Druze that the Christians had it coming, they tell the Christians that the Druze deserved what they got. And what do the Jews say of all this? A Jewish police officer entrusted with restoring order in Maghar told Haaretz: "If that's what they do to each other, imagine what they would do to us." The height of the Israeli paradox reveals itself on top of a tall hill near Zippori. About a century after the founding of the Hashomer organization, pre-state Eretz Israel's own security company, there is now "The New Hashomer." The new force was established with the express purpose of protecting state-owned lands and the territory of Jewish farmers against harm from Arab and Bedouin neighbors. At the top of the hill stands a single trailer, an Israeli flag flying on its roof. It is meant to be a show of strength, but it actually communicates weakness, seeming more like a West Bank outpost than a self- evident presence on sovereign territory. We did not go out looking for the axis of fear, we simply found it along the way. A sad sight: a power-loving but weak country that leaves its citizens to live in fear of each other. In its 60th year, Israel seems to have reverted back to the pre-state situation, with each community defending itself and preparing for what will come next. Alone. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Grass is greener For the cannabis-growing residents of Lebanon, recent fighting has been a blessing. Piggy bank savings Welfare Minister Herzog unveils a plan to open savings accounts for every Israeli child.   1.   Sad but true, this is a Jewish thing 13:18  |  ScotGuy 09/05/08   2.   Very accurate article 13:36  |  Dror 09/05/08   3.   Tribes and camps 13:43  |  Dror 09/05/08   4.   Max Horoskopski; Totally wrong conclussion and fear mongering 16:55  |  Max Horoskopski 09/05/08   5.   Our direction 17:44  |  Abir 09/05/08   6.   Our Direction - 2 17:59  |  Abir 09/05/08   7.   WHOSE rights ? 20:04  |  David 09/05/08   8.   Fear mongering or reality? 20:24  |  Lobo08 09/05/08   9.   Dror 00:36  |  Danite 10/05/08

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