Israeli Arabs Protest Demolition of Homes

In a rare outpouring of anger, thousands of Israeli Arabs protested Israeli housing policies Monday, vowing to rebuild three homes authorities had demolished in this Arab village.

Last week’s demolitions were followed by the worst clashes in decades involving Israel’s 1 million Arab citizens. The weekend violence stirred deep-seated fears among the country’s Jewish majority of an uprising from within.

Israeli police watched the reconstruction Monday in Suweij, a Bedouin village in Israel’s northern Galilee, but did not interfere.

“If they come back and destroy it, we will rebuild it again,” Hani Gidari said, taking a break from putting up one cinder-block house. “I am not afraid, because I am doing what is right. We were here before they were.”

Earlier Monday, thousands of Israeli Arabs marched to protest the demolitions, which Israel said were carried out because proper building permits had not been obtained, and held a strike that closed schools, offices and shops.

Israeli President Ezer Weizman said Monday that he had warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Arab situation was “going to explode.”

Israeli Arabs rarely engage in violent protests like those in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but they long have complained of discrimination at the hands of the Israeli government. They have full voting rights but are not required to serve in the army, as Israeli Jews are, and receive less government funding per capita than the country’s Jewish majority.

“We live like all citizens and want peace,” legislator Abdel Malik Dahamsha said Monday.

But “if the police will continue to push us, there will be an Arab intifada,” he said, referring to the 1987-93 Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Moti Zaken, Netanyahu’s advisor on Arab affairs, criticized the decision to demolish the homes just before the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, which begins today. “The timing was not right,” he said.