Riots resume in Acre after lull

A fourth straight day of rioting in Acre ended yesterday with Jews torching an empty Arab house, three Jews lightly wounded by Arab stone-throwers, and three other Jews arrested for throwing stones at policemen and Arabs.

Since Wednesday, police have arrested some 30 rioters, both Jewish and Arab. Some of them were subsequently released because they are minors.

The day began without incident, and many Acre residents hoped that the violence was finally at an end. But a few hours after sundown, it erupted anew, with the city's eastern neighborhood once again the focal point. Hundreds of Jewish rioters clashed with policemen, and Jewish and Arab mobs threw stones at each other.

This followed a series of violent incidents on Friday that included the torching of three other houses.

"Everyone thinks that only Jews are being hurt in the eastern neighborhood, and nobody's paying any attention to us," complained Subhi Murasi, owner of one of the torched houses. "All the money I invested in this house, and now everything has been destroyed."

He said that various Arab public figures - including Sheikh Ra'ad Salah, head of the northern faction of Israel's Islamic Movement - had promised to help the Arab families whose homes were damaged.

Many neighborhood residents have fled their homes since the rioting erupted last Wednesday night, shortly after the start of the Yom Kippur holiday. Ramel, one such refugee, returned to the neighborhood yesterday to get some valuables from her house, but was afraid to go in. "Some 200 people were standing there with murder in their eyes," she said. "Even the policemen who accompanied us felt pressured, so we left."

Thousands of policemen deployed at friction points throughout the city on Friday and Saturday, and for most of yesterday, their presence seemed to be doing the trick. But the city was hardly back to normal. The Old City, normally thronged on weekends, was virtually empty, aside from work crews dismantling preparations for the theater festival that was supposed to have taken place this week, but has now been canceled. And Arab merchants, their shops empty, were worriedly discussing an Internet posting that urged Jews to boycott Arab businesses and "deal with the Arabs forcefully."

Senior police officers met with local Arab leaders yesterday, and all agreed on the need to restore normalcy as soon as possible. MK Abbas Zkoor (United Arab List-Ta'al), an Acre resident, said that after the meeting, participants published a statement calling for reconciliation and even denouncing the Arab driver who, according to Jewish residents, sparked the riots Wednesday night by driving through the neighborhood blasting loud music while the Yom Kippur prayers were under way.

Yet many Arabs were also furious over the city's cancellation of the theater festival, viewing it as an economic punishment aimed squarely at Arab merchants, for whom the annual festival is a major source of income. Representatives of local Arab and Jewish organizations issued a joint statement urging the mayor to rescind the decision.

Numerous politicians also visited Acre over the weekend, led by prime minister-designate Tzipi Livni and Public Security Minister Avi Dichter. Livni denounced the vandals from both sides and spoke of the need to strengthen Jewish-Arab relations in the city.