Galilee’s Arabs, Jews Strive to Rebuild Trust

Samir Hamzi looks at the empty tables in his spotless restaurant, a place packed just seven weeks ago with Jews and Arabs eating kosher-style Arab food beneath framed copies of Koranic verses, and sees a dream disappearing.

Hamzi opened Samir’s in April as a gathering place for the two peoples who so uneasily share this land. He hung cheery apricot drapes at the windows, spread the tables with crisp blue cloths and supplied comfy wicker chairs. Almost as soon as the doors opened, the restaurant was a hit. Jews and Arabs traveled for miles to enjoy its grilled meats and fish, often lingering over meals until after midnight.

But the illusion of coexistence created at Samir’s was shattered Oct. 1, when violent demonstrations that began in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip spilled into the Arab villages and towns in Israel.

Before the riots in Israel ended a few days later--though they continue in Palestinian-occupied territories--13 Arab Israelis had been shot to death by police. Relations between the nation’s Jewish and Arab citizens were in tatters. Samir’s and hundreds of other Arab-owned restaurants and businesses were deserted by Jewish clientele.

Today, Arabs and Jews are taking tentative steps to try to repair the damage done during the upheaval. Both sides have engaged in public soul-searching about why Arab communities erupted in anger and why police used live ammunition in response.

No Choice but to Learn to Coexist

The communities here in the Galilee, where Arabs are a majority, are not like those in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Economic or physical separation between Arabs and Jews is impossible. Citizens of Israel, they have no choice but to learn to live together.

For the first few weeks after the riots within Israel, Arabs could not even get electricity or other utilities repaired in their communities; companies were too frightened to send workers to what suddenly was considered enemy territory. It took the intervention of Prime Minster Ehud Barak’s office and guarantees of safe passage from local Arab leaders to restore services.

Recently, Barak and members of his Cabinet have called on Jews to again patronize Arab businesses. But Jews have not yet forgiven their neighbors, Arab Israelis say. The undeclared boycott is causing serious economic harm and raising questions about whether Arabs will ever be treated as full citizens.

“Before the troubles, 80% of my clients were Jews,” said Abed Duki, a produce salesman here in Sakhnin, about 75 miles north of Jerusalem. “We sold to Jews who lived in the settlements and to Jewish restaurants. They’ve almost completely stopped coming now.”

Duki said he has fired three of his seven workers and will be forced to let another go if business doesn’t pick up soon.

“This can’t go on,” he said. “We need to live together. We need them, they need us.”

A few minutes’ drive north of Sakhnin, Misgav Regional Council head Erez Kreissler, administrator for about 10,500 Jews living in small, scattered communities of the western Galilee, snorted in disgust when asked about the government’s call for Jews to rebuild relations with their Arab neighbors.

“They sit in Jerusalem, and they try to tell us what to do,” he said. “I don’t agree with boycotting, but I understand it. People here are hurt. Something deep and vicious happened here. I am not afraid to go to Sakhnin now, but it is hard for me to drive through the village because I feel angry and disappointed. I feel like I saw the real faces of some of my neighbors during these riots.”

Giving Thought to Life for Arabs in Israel

Sharon Bareket saw the same rage but said it made him think about what life is truly like for Arabs living in a Jewish state.

“At the beginning of the craziness, I found myself--like everyone else--sitting at home, watching TV and crying,” said Bareket, owner of a local magazine with offices in an industrial park just outside Sakhnin. He covered the town’s riots and said he has no doubt that demonstrators would have set fire to Jewish-owned businesses if police had not intervened. Two Arabs were shot to death by police Oct. 1, just a few hundred feet from the magazine’s offices.

“We found ourselves in the middle of some kind of war,” Bareket said. “We could smell the tear gas and the smell of forests burning that the Arabs torched. It was not just a feeling that everything had gone wrong but a feeling of real danger.”

His first emotion, Bareket said, was anger. He was eager for the police to strike back at demonstrators. But a week after the riots here, he decided that the Galilee’s Jews and Arabs have no alternative but to learn to live together. He and some friends erected a large tent on “neutral” land between a Jewish and an Arab community and invited anyone to come.

Initially, only Jewish leftists and Arab intellectuals, along with locals who had always been in contact with Jews, came to the tent. But after Bareket led a delegation of 20 Jews to pay a condolence call on the two families whose sons had been killed during the demonstrations, young Arabs who had participated in the riots and others who had never had contact with Jewish neighbors began to show up.

They sat in a circle in plastic chairs, sipping tea and passing around an olive branch. Whoever held the branch had the floor and stopped speaking only when he or she handed off the branch.

“After I had been sitting in the tent for a few days, at first I got more depressed,” said Bareket’s wife, Noa. “I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t say that they were sorry for what had happened. And at first I thought there is no way we can bridge this gap.”

For 11 days, hundreds of Jews and Arabs came to the tent, airing their hurt and anger and fears. Many came time and again.

“We understood that we didn’t really know each other,” Bareket said. “We eat at their restaurants, we fix our cars in their garages, they work in our settlements, but this is all very superficial. It has nothing to do with feelings, hopes or vision.”

Reaching a Decision to Work Together

By the time the autumn rains began and the tent was folded, Bareket said, the “regulars” had moved beyond accusing each other and venting. Dozens of Jews and Arabs had decided--many for the first time in their lives--to work on joint projects and activities designed to build common ground between their communities.

They created committees that are planning environmental projects, youth activities, educational projects, Arab studies and women’s studies groups.

“Maybe what happened was for the best,” Noa Bareket said. “Now maybe we can heal the situation. I don’t think we can in our lifetime. I think there will be more demonstrations, more stones and more violence, but we can begin.”

Both sides agree that something fundamental in their relations has changed, but neither side can say whether what comes next will be better or worse.

“The coexistence of the labaneh and the zatar is finished,” said Sakhnin’s Arab mayor, Mustafa abu Rayal, referring to foods served in restaurants where many Jews had their only interaction with the country’s minority before the riots. “We are at a crossroads for the Arabs and the Jews. What happened showed us that this sort of coexistence cannot go on.”

The demonstrations, Abu Rayal said, showed Israeli Jews that Arab communities have deep-rooted problems that must be addressed by the central government and the nation’s majority. Arabs, who make up about 20% of Israel’s population, will never feel like equal citizens unless the government addresses the problem of land confiscation from Arabs, as well as inequality in municipal services and educational and employment opportunities.

“We are both Palestinians and citizens of Israel,” he said. “We want to feel our citizenship. We want to feel that the government is looking after our needs too. We want the government to see the development of Sakhnin as an asset to the state.”

The government has created a committee to probe the police handling of demonstrations nationwide and has promised to channel about $1.2 billion into development projects in the Arab sector over the next four years. But Jews and Arabs say that more--much more--is needed. Each side wants the other to acknowledge past wrongs.

In Sakhnin, a town of 23,000, Arab residents say a new relationship must be built on a foundation that includes some acknowledgment by Jewish Israelis that Arabs have seen their lands taken, their people discriminated against. And Jews must start to trust their neighbors again.

Hamzi, for his part, is reaching out to Jewish clients, asking them to return to Samir’s. He hired a Jewish advertising firm to place ads in Hebrew publications.

“We support and work for friendship and fraternity between all the residents of the area, and condemn all forms and expressions of violence,” the ads read. “We look forward to seeing you among our guests, as always.”

But Hamzi worries that Arab Israelis might have so alienated Jews by taking their grievances to the street that the damage is irreparable.

“Nothing good can come of this,” he said. “I wish it hadn’t happened.”