War widens gulf between Israeli Jews and Arabs

JERUSALEM: In Abu Ghosh, a village in the hills between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Jewish customers typically pack the Arab-run restaurants. Since war broke out in Gaza last month, they’ve stopped coming.
It’s one example of how the conflict is straining the already fragile coexistence of Israel’s 20 percent Arab minority and the majority Jewish population, spreading mistrust and violence. A bus was attacked in Jerusalem Monday by a Palestinian man, while Arab Israelis have complained of increasing harassment sometimes including physical attacks.
Abu Ghosh, 80 km from the Gaza Strip, is usually “an example of how Arabs and Israelis can live together,” said Ibrahim, who works in a restaurant overlooking the village’s terraced hills and a four-turret mosque. “This particular war has hit us the worst,” with business down 90 percent, he said.
Ibrahim, like others Bloomberg News spoke to for this story, asked to only be identified by his first name out of concern for reprisals.
As the conflict deepened, Arab Israeli author Sayed Kashua, who has told Israelis the Palestinian story in his writing and on a popular television show, “Arab Labor,” announced that he’s had it with his native land.
“Last week I understood that I can’t stay here any longer,” he wrote in Britain’s Guardian newspaper on July 19. “Something inside of me broke.”
With nine of 10 Jewish Israelis supporting the campaign, according to polls, dissenting views have been targeted with violence. Jewish opponents hurled eggs and bottles at anti-war demonstrators in Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem Post newspaper said.
In the northern town of Qalansua, Arab youths were accused of pulling a Jewish man out his car, beating him and torching the vehicle. Swastikas were spray-painted in Jerusalem and in a Bedouin town.
While Israeli Arabs have full legal rights, they say that doesn’t translate to equal status in areas like the jobs or housing markets, or funds for local communities.
The war has exacerbated the alienation between the two communities, said Arye Carmon, president of the Israel Democracy Institute research center in Jerusalem. “It brings the hostility and the rift to a new level.”
Ahmed, an east Jerusalem Palestinian, says young Jews on the train sometimes “go up and down asking passengers if they are Arabs and if someone says yes, they beat him. Who is protecting us?” The Jerusalem municipality said it has beefed up security and “won’t tolerate violence from any party.”
Susan, a 60-year-old American who lives in Israel, said she used to worry that Arab passengers might be carrying bombs. Now, they “don’t take the train anymore,” she said. “I don’t have to worry as much.”
It was this atmosphere of distrust and sometimes open hatred that sent Kashua, the author, packing for good, he said.
“Twenty-five years of writing in Hebrew and nothing has changed,” he wrote in his opinion piece. “When Jewish youth parade through the city shouting ‘Death to the Arabs,’ and attack Arabs only because they are Arabs, I understood that I had lost my little war.”