TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041392/0413002.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 6KB | 123 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 39

MIDDLE EAST

The Enemy Within


Israel's Arab citizens, inspired by the intifadeh and Islamic
fundamentalism, join the violence against Jews

By LISA BEYER/UMM EL-FAHM -- With reporting by Jamil Hamad/
Umm el-Fahm


    Even by the brutal standards of the Middle East, it was
a savage assault. As midnight approached, four Arab men stole
into an Israeli army camp and, using a huge ax and several
knives, hacked three soldiers to death. Assuming the killers
were Palestinians from the occupied territories, Jews at first
saw the attack as yet another terrorist engagement that fell
within the unwritten rules of the region's slow-burn war. But
then came the stunner: the alleged assailants, apprehended last
month, were not aggrieved residents of the territories but
citizens of Israel -- Arab citizens, "our Arabs," as Jewish
Israelis think of this normally pacific minority. Suddenly, it
looked to the country's Jewish majority as if the enemy was now
truly in their midst.

    Israeli authorities have long feared that the intifadeh,
the Palestinian uprising in the territories, would spread to
the country's 710,000 Arab citizens, who make up 14% of the
population. Now they are wondering if the February murders, near
the northern kibbutz of Galed, were just an opening act. Leaders
of the Arab community are at pains to stress that the attack was
an aberration, that their people remain loyal citizens of the
state. But no amount of oath swearing can dispel the truth that
the Arabs of Israel have become increasingly radicalized, both
by the spirit of the intifadeh and the attractions of Islamic
extremism.

    Nationalistic fervor, once quiescent among Israeli Arabs,
has grown steadily since Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza
Strip in the 1967 war. That put the Arabs in direct contact with
their Palestinian brethren in the territories. With the start
of the intifadeh in 1987, Israeli Arabs, in limited numbers,
began to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at Jews, to fly the
banned Palestinian flag and to paint radical slogans on town
walls.

    The February hackings near Galed underscored a potentially
more disruptive development: the rise among Israeli Arabs of
Islamic fervor, complete with a fanatic streak. The four Arabs
charged with the killings were all followers of the Islamic
Movement, a fundamentalist organization that is legal in Israel.
Police say they were also members of Islamic Jihad, the outlawed
militant group that is Mideast-wide.

    Leaders of the Islamic Movement, who officially eschew
violence, were quick to deplore the killings. But authorities
are worried that when they speak and write of the need for a
spiritual Jihad, ostensibly a struggle for the soul of the
individual believer, their devotees hear in that call a
traditional summons for a holy war against non-Muslims,
especially the Jews of Israel. "The killings near Galed didn't
come out of a vacuum," says Elie Rekhess, an expert on Israeli
Arabs at Tel Aviv University.

    Officially, the Islamic Movement's main mission is to
revitalize religion among the Muslims of Israel, who constitute
86% of the Arab population; the rest are Christian. But it also
supports the establishment of a Palestinian state in the
occupied territories, a view held by the vast majority of
Israeli Arabs -- who simultaneously say they would not live
there. Beyond that, the Islamic Movement, like its counterparts
elsewhere, supports the idea of a Muslim regime eventually
ruling the entire Middle East -- including Israel and its Jewish
majority. Says Abdul-Rahman Hashem, deputy mayor of Umm el-Fahm,
an Arab town in Israel's north: "As long as we are using legal
means, why not?"

    Naturally, such comments make Jewish officials squirm. "To
say the least, we don't like their ideology," says Alexander
Bligh, the Prime Minister's adviser on Arab affairs. "We can
live with it as long as it's not translated into violent acts."
But the Galed attack has made the government more wary of the
movement.

    That task is growing more difficult as the movement
expands. In local elections in 1989, the group took 28.7% of the
seats in the 12 purely Arab municipalities in which it ran,
winning control of five town councils and later adding two more
in subsequent contests. By all accounts, the organization's
influence has increased since those elections. The movement has
inherited some support from Israel's largely discredited
Communist Party, previously the most successful vote getter
among Israeli Arabs, and has bolstered its standing by providing
relatively clean and efficient administrations.

    At the same time, the blatant discrimination Arabs suffer
in Israeli society makes the community fertile ground for
radicalism. For every shekel the central government spends on
an Arab citizen, it spends 2.5 on a Jewish one. While 11% of
Israel's Jews live below the poverty line, 52% of its Arabs do.
No Arab has ever been a full Cabinet minister, and even the
Prime Minister's adviser on Arab affairs is and always has been
a Jew.

    Israeli officials profess a commitment to closing the
economic gap between the Arabs and Jews. Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir's declared goal is to equalize government spending on
citizens in four years. Even if that happens, growing numbers
of Israel's Arab citizens will be in an anomalous position: as
long as the Palestinian problem is unresolved, their own country
will be at war with them. In this case, says Ibrahim Sarsur, the
Islamicist mayor of Kfar Qasim, "the circle of bloodshed will
not be broken." If more Arab Israelis take up the battle for
Islamic supremacy even in the land of the Jews, the prospects
are grimmer still.