Upsurge in Islamic Violence Fosters Fear, Suspicion in Israel

Sheik Raed Salah, a hard-line leader of Israel’s Islamic Movement, chooses his words with care when he speaks of recent evidence that Israeli Arabs are involved in attacks against Jews.

Israel’s long history of discrimination against its Arab citizens “is not a justification for violence,” said Salah, the mayor of this scruffy Israeli Arab town--and the object of intensive new scrutiny by a government that says it has no choice but to act against extremists within Israel’s own borders.

Nonetheless, Salah said, for some Arabs in Israel, “the oppression and discrimination they suffer create feelings that may result in such extraordinary actions.” He offered no condemnation of those moved to violence.

Israeli officials claim, in fact, that Salah himself has helped foster a bitter, anti-Jewish atmosphere that may have inspired recent attacks or attempted attacks by young Arabs with links to his movement.

The sudden upsurge in violence by Israeli Arabs, including a pair of botched car bombings and the slayings of two Jewish hikers in recent weeks, has shocked Israeli Jews and Arabs alike, creating feelings of vulnerability in each community.

For Jews, who often associate politically motivated attacks with Palestinians, it has raised fears of a violent fifth column within Israel’s million-strong Arab citizenry. Israeli Arabs, who now make up a sixth of the state’s population, remained on their land when Israel was created in 1948. Unlike Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they vote in Israeli elections and attend Israeli schools.

Israeli Arabs, meanwhile, fear that recent steps taken by the government to increase official monitoring of the Islamic Movement, its publications, leaders and funding mark a return to the oppressive measures of the past, when Arab citizens lived under Israeli military rule from 1948 to 1966. Many insist that those who carried out the violence were acting on their own, apart from any organized movement in Israel.

“I am afraid that Israel is trying to take action against all Arabs under cover of these measures against the Islamic Movement,” said Mahmoud Attiyeh, 66, a retired construction worker in Umm al Fahm, southeast of Haifa. “This is not the way of democracy.”

But Israeli officials say they have growing evidence that the recent attacks were inspired by the Islamic Movement and coordinated with the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

Hamas, with headquarters in Palestinian-ruled Gaza and the Syrian capital, Damascus, is violently opposed to the Middle East peace process and has carried out dozens of attacks in Israel. Israeli officials say the group has recently increased its recruiting efforts among Israeli Arabs, who can travel freely throughout the state, unlike Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

“We are not declaring war on Israeli Arabs or the Islamic Movement,” Internal Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said. “But we cannot ignore the fact that the bombing attempts coincided with the relaunching of the peace process. We believe that Hamas is trying to act by proxy in Israel, and we have to protect ourselves.”

In its announcement late last month, the government said it would intensify scrutiny of the movement, from closer monitoring of its funding and institutions to the Friday sermons delivered by its preachers. But it turned down recommendations from police and the Shin Bet security service for a harsher crackdown.

Ben-Ami said he had argued against the tougher proposals, including travel restrictions on the movement’s leaders and closure of its newspapers, out of concern that such a crackdown could create anger that might propel more Israeli Arabs toward the fundamentalist group.

“We wanted to be as precise as possible, to take a sort of X-ray and see to what extent we could pinpoint the link between this movement and anti-state or terrorist activities,” Ben-Ami said. “We also want to say to people that there are certain red lines, that you can criticize the government or the state of Israel, but you cannot pass these lines and become an operational ally of the Hamas.”

He compared the atmosphere created by some of the more radical mosque preachers, including Salah, to the climate of incitement in Israel just before the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir, a religious Jew. Amir said he shot Rabin in order to stop the peace process. Many Israelis blamed right-wing politicians and extremist rabbis for fostering an environment of fear and hatred in the weeks before the assassination.

Officially, the police and Shin Bet said they were satisfied with the government’s decisions, but some within both forces were privately critical, arguing that the measures did not go far enough and had little value.

Members of the Islamic Movement and many other prominent Israeli Arabs objected nonetheless.

“If there are crimes committed, then those who commit them should be punished,” argued Hashem Mahameed, an Israeli Arab member of parliament who is affiliated with but not a member of the Islamic Movement. “But taking action against any collective is very dangerous. You risk making everyone in this movement an enemy against the state of Israel.”

The Islamic Movement itself, however, is split into two factions, a northern wing that is led by Salah and considered more extreme, and a more pragmatic southern one that is led by Sheik Abdullah Nimr Darwish of the town of Kafr Qasem, near Tel Aviv.

The movement, which consisted of a loose network of preachers when it began in the 1970s, gradually became more organized, winning representation in town councils and mayors’ offices in numerous Arab communities. It seeks to promote Muslim values and is slowly displacing a collection of leftist and Communist parties that had controlled local governments in Arab towns from the Galilee in the north to the Negev in the south.

Although difficult to quantify, support for the movement, especially its more radical wing, appears to be growing, according to Haifa University sociologist Sammy Smooha. Recent polls of Israeli Arabs seem to show parallel trends, Smooha said: growing strength for the radical Islamists and rising disenchantment with Israel and its government.

The split in the movement occurred in 1996, the result of a dispute over whether to allow members to run for parliament. The southern wing voted to run, arguing that representation would allow Islamists to push for civil rights for all Israeli Arabs. It has since won two seats.

The northern group, which participates in local government only, argued that sitting in parliament would mean explicit recognition of the Jewish state and didn’t run. Many of the more radical leaders also are strongly critical of the peace process, often accusing Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat of selling out the Palestinian cause, especially on Jerusalem.

The recent attacks have only deepened the rift within the group, those who study the movement say. While Darwish, the leader of the southern faction, has strongly denounced the violence, even referring to the instigators as “criminals,” Salah and other northern leaders have been more circumspect.

“The southern faction has been extraordinarily explicit in condemning these acts of terrorism,” said Elie Rekhess, a scholar at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Center and an expert on Israel’s Arabs. “The tone has been much different from the north.”

In the interview recently in his City Hall office, Salah, 41, sat with his back to a window that looked out on the golden dome of the Abu Obeida Mosque, the largest in this town of 35,000 people. He delivers the sermon there each Friday, he said, and knows that his words, which are broadcast on loudspeakers, are viewed in Israel as inflammatory and anti-Israeli.

But he said he and other members of his organization operate within the laws of Israel, even as they try to promote Islamic values in activities that range from politics to education, sports and social programs. The movement runs day-care centers, housing and anti-poverty programs in the Arab communities, filling gaps in many of the services provided by the state.

Asked whether it is possible for the Islamic Movement to coexist with the Jewish state, Salah smiled. “We are Muslims, but who says we are idealists?” he said. “We know we live in a political entity called Israel and that we are a minority here.

“It is impossible to think that this group would be able to impose an Islamic caliphate on this state. But it is our right to hold on to our Arab and Muslim identity inside it.”

Maher Abukhater of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.