When they are willing to talk at all, Israeli Arabs, who make up around 18% of Israel’s population, discuss heightened tensions with their neighbors.
A member of the Lod City Council, Fida Shehada represents the town’s 84,000 residents, of whom roughly 30% are Arab Israeli citizens.
And Ms. Shehada, an Israeli citizen of Palestinian descent, is, to put it kindly, fearful of what might happen now in the wake of Hamas’ killing of Israeli people. “Everyone is in great distress,” she declared. There is a lot of concern of a powerful retaliation.
Jews and Arabs frequently cohabitate in Lod, a city south of Tel Aviv, she claimed, but now days Arabs are reluctant to enter the air-raid shelters. Ms. Shehada stated, “They claim to detect hatred in the eyes of the Jews. They claim to sense hate, but in my opinion, they are actually experiencing distress and dread.
About 18% of Israel’s population is made up of Arab residents, many of whom prefer to be called Palestinians. They have struggled for years to balance their allegiance to the state with their desires for a better life for themselves, an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, and an independent Palestine.
Normal tensions have now reached almost intolerable heights with this extraordinary assassination of Israelis inside Israel, at a time when the Israeli Jewish public is furious and screaming for retribution.
Leading Arab leaders in Israel, including Mansour Abbas and Ayman Odeh, both of whom are Knesset members, have vehemently denounced the conduct of Hamas, the Palestinian group that launched the attack on Israel, and urged restraint.
But as Ms. Shehada noted, people often conceal their emotions because they are conflicted about them. According to her, young Arabs at first took pleasure in Hamas’ resistance, which governs the Gaza Strip. “People were happy in the first instant when Gazans invaded Israel; they felt that someone was taking action to address the situation.”
But she added that feeling of pride shortly subsided. This was before we saw all the pictures of rape, kidnapping, and slaughter, according to Ms. Shehada. This is not a legal kind of conflict.
During a subsequent Israeli-Palestinian crisis in May 2021, Lod was plagued by riots and animosity between the Jewish and Muslim communities. The 40-year-old Ms. Shehada claims that Jews threw rocks at her while she was in her own home.
According to locals, Lod has pervasive issues with poverty and crime, with Arab criminal organizations operating with little hindrance from the Israeli police. These issues are present even in more normal periods. Even the municipal administration has distinct Arab and Jewish ministries and is largely segregated.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister and head of the ultranationalist Jewish Power party, is in charge of the police. He is a member of the right-wing coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In addition to encouraging settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Mr. Ben-Gvir has been escalating hostilities with Israel’s Arab community.
In late July, he led more than 1,000 ultranationalist settlers to the site, angering Muslims and leading Hamas to declare that it is fighting to defend Al Aqsa. He has previously spoken of “storming” the Aqsa Mosque compound, one of the holiest sites in the Muslim world.
The police have been urged to get ready for riots after Mr. Ben-Gvir mentioned further Arab-Israeli conflict in towns like Lod. Ms. Shehada and others see this as a dangerous provocation.
One of the most notable Arab journalists in Israel, Mohammad Magadli, is more upbeat. He sees a kind of startled calm emerging from the shock of the previous week. He claimed that, as opposed to 2021, in mixed-race communities, “the Arab and Jewish societies are more aware of each other’s pain and can understand how destructive the consequences can be if they don’t consider each other’s feelings.”
Even among the leaders who first called for easing the situation, Mr. Magadli added, “there is greater responsibility between the two societies.”
According to Ms. Shehada, her aunt was currently in Gaza and was unable to escape. Ms. Shehada stated that the buildings on either side of the residence where she is staying have already been bombed before pausing, sighing, and stating, “I don’t think they will survive this war.”
According to Mousa Mousa, 23, an Israeli Arab wearing a T-shirt in Hebrew promoting his juice shop, the large market in Ramla, a nearby town with a similar ethnic mix, was almost deserted and had an odd air of caution. “I’m not sleeping,” he declared. “I’m worried about how the villagers along the road will respond to what Hamas did.”
Arabs and Jews mix in the market, he claimed, “but the feeling is different now.”
Mr. Mousa commented, “I sense resentment from the people here; they don’t smile as much as they used to.” “I try to keep my head held high.”
He claimed to have disdain for the politicians that incite animosity within each community. Mr. Mousa added angrily, “They feed on divisiveness. “That’s the foundation of politics.”
He claimed that what Hamas did drastically altered life in the area. “I don’t think there’s a way back,” he continued. “People will not be the same as they were.”
There is also a noticeable tension in East Jerusalem, close to the unusually vacant Old City, and a more obvious Israeli police presence.
They frequently pause and inspect young Arab males in regular periods. Adham, 19, claims that as he makes the brief journey from his father’s shop at the Damascus Gate to his home in the Old City, he is now being stopped three times. Every time, he is required to remove his pants, lift his shirt, and display his ID card. His father requested that their last name not be used out of concern for their safety in the current situation.
Adham expressed his admiration for Hamas‘ audacity. They do, he continued, “represent the Palestinians.” They are the only ones guarding the Palestinians, after all.
He has little regard for Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, like many young men around him. For working with Israel, particularly in regards to security in the occupied West Bank, Adham claimed that “in our eyes, he is a traitor”.
Most Palestinians in East Jerusalem are not Israeli citizens and hence feel less divided between allegiances than Arabs in Ramla or Lod who are integrated into Israeli society. The Palestinians in East Jerusalem became legal residents but not citizens after Israel captured the city in 1967.
One of Jerusalem’s best booksellers, managed by Mahmoud Muna, serves all customers. He supports a democratic, equal-rights unitary state and identifies as a Palestinian from Jerusalem. He views himself and similar individuals as possible role models for a different sort of integrated state.
In contrast, he claimed that right now there is an abnormally high degree of “tension, anxiety, anger, confusion, and fear that has grown among Palestinians, and I feel it myself.”
In the previous five days, Mr. Muna has been stopped twice for checks by the police, which has increased the police presence in and around East Jerusalem and always has the potential to cause conflict. He said, “It helps you keep your cool to be over 40.”
Are Palestinians trapped in Israel? After pausing, he continued, “We are always in between.”
Everyone in West Jerusalem is agitated and upset, yet according to friends who commute there, “everyone is pretending or putting on a face.” People frequently use platitudes like “it’s crazy,” “it’s difficult,” or “I can’t understand it,” Mr. Muna explained, adding that doing so enables them to avoid having to express their opinions. However, being silent is equally unacceptable.
Moments like this one are also illuminating, according to him: “It is a good time to see things we don’t normally see,” like the absence of friends who have been called up to serve in the army as reserve personnel.
Palestinians are reminded of how militarized Israeli society is, he claimed. “Those you had lunch with yesterday are up front, what are they doing?”
According to Mr. Muna, this week perfectly summarized the entire dispute. He declared, “There has never been a higher level of nationalism, of we and them, than now. Resistance turns become terrorism and vice versa, as well as “us and them,” “civilians and army,” and other phrases that are suddenly in opposition. Both sides refer to the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict as a “new Holocaust,” while the Palestinians refer to it as a “new Nakba,” or tragedy, due to their widespread expulsion and dispossession.
The graveness of the situation, according to Mr. Muna, is comparable to condensing the past 100 years into a week.