Israeli Arabs in a Jewish Neighborhood Know Fear

Each time there is a knock on their soot-blackened front door, Wafa and Sonya Khoury remove a Post-it from the peephole, peer into the hallway of their apartment building and ask the visitors to identify themselves. Satisfied the callers are not hostile, they unbolt and then unlock the door.

What may be normal precautions in another country would seem like paranoia in low-crime Israel, except for the fact that the Arab women have twice found firebombs on the doorstep of their fourth-floor apartment in predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem.

The Khoury sisters and roommate Manal Diab, another Arab Israeli from the Galilee, say they were not looking for trouble in July when they moved into the new building that borders a religious neighborhood and the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem. They just wanted a nice and reasonably priced place to live.

When the first fire was set in their stairwell in October, they went looking for safer quarters. But after the second bomb was detonated before dawn Nov. 30, in the hands of a police officer who was trying to dismantle it, they decided to stay and fight.

“If we leave, they will do the same to others, and then all Arabs will have to leave,” said Sonya Khoury, 25. “It is very dangerous, but if we don’t fight for our rights, it will be even more dangerous.”

While many eyes are focused on the battle between Israelis and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the flames outside the women’s apartment have brought to light racial and religious tensions that also exist in West Jerusalem.

Many Arab citizens of Israel, whose families remained in the country after the state was formed in 1948, say that, by and large, they feel unwelcome and unwanted by Jewish compatriots in Jerusalem.

Firebombs are not the norm, but many Arab Israelis say hostility is. They hunt for housing among reluctant landlords and, when they find something, neighbors seem unhappy to see them moving in. If they speak Arabic among themselves on buses or in restaurants, they say, they receive angry stares and sniping comments. Sometimes they are prevented from entering pubs.

Despite their Israeli citizenship and fluency in Hebrew, they say they are regarded as outsiders or, worse, as a potential fifth column in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the aftermath of Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem--five in the last 2 1/2 years that have left more than 65 people dead--they feel they must lie low.

“It is always more difficult after an explosion,” said Iyad Ighbarieh, 25, a Hebrew University student from the Arab village of Umm al Fahm in northern Israel. “Usually, we just stay home. Or we come to campus, but they look at us differently. When there is an explosion, we avoid contact with them.”

Arabs Took Flight

Before the state of Israel was created, whole neighborhoods of West Jerusalem, such as Katamon, Talbieh and Baca, were Arab. All but a handful of those families either fled or were forced out of the area by military groups. Meanwhile, the village of Beit Safafa was absorbed into the city after the 1967 Mideast War, adding about 6,400 Arab Israelis to the resident population of West Jerusalem.

Beyond that, demographers estimate that only a couple of hundred Arab Israelis live in West Jerusalem. Most of them are Christians who came from Nazareth and Arab villages in the Galilee; several are current and former students of Hebrew University.

Many other Arabs circulate in the city. There are about 150,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, most of whom have rejected Israeli citizenship on political grounds, and thousands of West Bank Palestinians with permits to work in restaurants, hotels and construction jobs.

This, however, does not alter the Jewish character of West Jerusalem or indicate any significant level of integration. In fact, several thousand Arab citizens of Israel opt to live in East Jerusalem or the West Bank--which Palestinians hope will become an independent state one day--and commute to school or jobs in West Jerusalem rather than live in a Jewish neighborhood.

“I can hardly stand [West] Jerusalem. They want you to feel all the time that you are an Arab,” said Azmi Bishara, a native of the Galilee and an Arab member of the Knesset, or parliament, from the leftist Hadash party. He lives on the outskirts of East Jerusalem, near Ramallah.

“I would think twice before walking in the Mahane Yehuda market or on Ben Yehuda [the pedestrian mall where suicide bombers struck last summer]. People look at you, you are stopped three or four times so they can register your ID. It is very unpleasant,” he said.

One longtime Arab resident of West Jerusalem concurred.

“You can’t be yourself. You have to hide from all of the crazy and radical people. . . . My husband has two sisters who studied in the university and work in West Jerusalem. They don’t dare live here. They are afraid of being rejected,” she said.

The woman and her husband, who asked not to be identified by name, caused a stir when they bought a house in the Jewish neighborhood of Abu Tor in 1991.

The purchase warranted front-page articles in Jerusalem newspapers at the time, and someone vandalized their yard. When they moved in they felt “like a UFO.”

But over the years, they have grown close to their Jewish neighbors, and their acquisition of a larger house on the block this year has not drawn any fire.

The couple send their two children to Hebrew-language schools, and the family is active in YMCA programs promoting Jewish, Christian and Muslim coexistence.

Nonetheless, they try to keep their heads down, fearing reprisals after Palestinian attacks on Jews and feeling nervous after incidents such as the firebomb at the Khourys’ apartment.

“I was worried that next they would come for me,” she said.

Arab residents say they feel that West Jerusalem is more problematic for them than other Israeli cities, such as Haifa, Jaffa and Tel Aviv, even though a recent Gallup Poll published in the Maariv and Yediot Aharonot newspapers suggests that the problem is nationwide.

The poll showed that 60% of Israelis say they would not rent an apartment to an Arab, while 40% said they would not rent to homosexuals, 33% to ultra-Orthodox Jews and 25% to Russian immigrants.

Arab residents say the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem--each side claims the city as its capital and holy land--and proximity to the West Bank makes life more difficult here. And, they say, tensions have increased in recent years as the city has grown more conservative and more religious.

Alouph Hareven, an activist with the Israeli civil rights group Sikkuy, cited studies showing that racist attitudes are higher among the right wing and ultra-religious in Israel.

“Among the religious, there is a general feeling of being besieged by secular, modern society. They see their two adversaries as secular Jews and, at the other end, Arabs,” Hareven said.

Some members of the right wing, he added, “do not distinguish between Arabs with whom Israel is still in conflict and Arabs who are law-abiding citizens.”

Police believe that those who left the bomb on the Khourys’ doorstep were “haredi extremists,” or ultra-Orthodox Jews, according to Shmuel Ben Rubi, a spokesman for the Jerusalem Police Department.

He said a special team is investigating the case. “I hope we will reach those who did it and make arrests,” he said.

Knocking on the Door

The Khourys and Diab also believe that their attacker was ultra-Orthodox, possibly a resident of their working-class neighborhood, which has a mix of religious and secular Jews. Twice, before the firebombs, they were disturbed by late-night knocks at the door from an Orthodox man whose side locks they observed through the peephole. On another occasion, someone wrote nevelah, or carcass, on the wall in the stairwell. The term refers to an animal that is slaughtered in a non-kosher manner.

There were other attacks. Someone put glue in their front-door lock, stuck in a key and broke it off. Another time, children from the neighborhood followed Diab and shouted at her, “Go to Jordan, go to Egypt, go to Iraq--this is not your country.”

“They don’t want us to be here because we are Arabs,” said Diab, who teaches Hebrew to Palestinians.

It is a logical conclusion for the women to draw in a neighborhood where the Arabic writing on many of the trilingual street signs has been defaced with black paint. And yet some of the Khourys’ neighbors suggest that their attackers may have been motivated by religious fanaticism rather than racism.

“I think it is because they are women and secular,” said a 35-year-old Jewish neighbor whose car was spray-painted after an incident between religious and secular Jewish children on the block.

As Christians, the women do not keep kosher or observe the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Young women in their 20s, dressed in blue jeans, boots and T-shirts, living alone and socializing with male friends are unacceptable to religious Jews.

It is also not acceptable in the conservative Palestinian culture, which is one of the reasons the Khourys and Diab have opted to live in West Jerusalem. On the east side, they said, they face crude comments and catcalls from Arab men, as well as a shortage of apartments, banks, buses and other services because of Israeli limits on development there.

“To be a woman in Arab society is very difficult. We have to fight a lot, not just with the Jews but with our own. I prefer to do it on the west side,” Sonya Khoury said.

Not all of the Khourys’ neighbors have been hostile.

Prior to this, the Khourys lived in a smaller apartment in Neve Yaakov--a Jewish enclave in East Jerusalem--without any problems. Their current landlord, who asked them to leave after the second fire for the sake of his property, has been patient. A few of their neighbors have been supportive, as are many Jerusalemites, particularly from more liberal and upscale neighborhoods. Several people called to offer to rent them apartments in West Jerusalem.

“We were very pained by what happened to those girls,” said Sharona Epstein, 52, from Beit Hakerem. “It is possible to live together or side by side.”

Since the intifada, or six-year Palestinian uprising that began in 1987, many Jews say they are too afraid to walk in East Jerusalem, and Epstein said she does not go there “as easily or happily as I used to.”

Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert visited the Khourys’ home the day after the second firebomb exploded to say that Jews and Arabs should be allowed to live anywhere in the city--a point he often makes when Jews move into Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Olmert said the city would pay for the damage from the bombing, and he offered to find the women a new apartment.

“I came here because I wanted all of Israel to see what is going on here,” Olmert said.

Bishara, the Arab member of the Knesset, dismissed the parallel the mayor was trying to draw between Arab citizens of Israel renting an apartment in West Jerusalem and Jews settling in occupied lands of East Jerusalem.

“The first is a freedom of choice of a place to live for a citizen. The second is a political act of a settler who does not come to live but to change the character of the city according to ideological claims and to prevent the possibility of the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in the future,” Bishara said.

The Khourys and Diab moved into their building in July and enjoyed peace for several months before neighbors realized they were Arabs. The first fire outside their door was set Oct. 13, and after that an Arab feminist organization recruited Jewish volunteers to stay with the women.

Jews Aid Arab Women

One of those, Barry Trachtenberg, a UCLA graduate student spending a year at Hebrew University, was on guard in their living room when the second firebomb went off in the wee hours of Nov. 30. He heard a noise, woke the women, and they called the police.

“My presence is not really preventive. It is mostly emotional support. In reality, what can I do?” Trachtenberg asked.

Trachtenberg and the Arab women seem to have an easy and friendly relationship. He accompanies them to and from work when he can, and even does such simple tasks for them as buying coffee at the neighborhood market, where they feel they are not welcome.

The women say they have lived among Jews all their lives in northern Israel, at Hebrew University and at their jobs in Jerusalem. But they all say they have no close Jewish friends, that always there is “a wall” separating Arabs and Jews. And now Diab admitted to a growing racism of her own--against Russian immigrants.

“I look at people as human beings. But the Russian people, it really hurts me, if the Russian people want a job or to look for an apartment, it’s, ‘Yes, sure, come sign a contract.’ And me, I have to beg,” Diab said. “In one month here, they have more rights than I do, and I’ve been here hundreds of years.”

Researcher Batsheva Sobelman of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.