A Simmering Civil War

By Matt Rees/Jerusalem

With the peace process falling apart, the last thing Israel needs is civil war. But that is what it almost had in its Arab neighborhoods and towns during the past two weeks. Israel's Arab minority rioted in the Galilee and in major cities like Jaffa and Haifa. Jewish mobs responded with attacks of their own. "Coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Israel has started to collapse," says Salah Tarif, a Druze Arab member of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's One Israel party.

The problem is that the 1 million citizens Israel calls Israeli Arabs tend to think of themselves as Palestinians who happen to live in Israel, not as Israelis of Arab descent. It's a crucial distinction and has always been a potential trigger. At the best of times it is a source of friction. In the midst of last week's chaos, it was a spark for some real tragedy.

On the eve of Yom Kippur, two Sundays ago, Azmi Bishara heard on a radio call-in show that a Jewish mob intended to torch his house. Bishara, a member of parliament from Nazareth, advocates an end to Israel's Jewish character in favor of "a state of all its citizens." He rushed home to evacuate his pregnant wife and two-year-old daughter, and at midnight a crowd gathered outside his home and stoned it. "Imagine if Arabs had attacked the house of a Jewish member of parliament," says Bishara. "They would have shot them. At my house, the police were just trying to persuade the mob nicely to go home." And there were other stories. In Tel Aviv, a mob torched a restaurant after locking its Arab kitchen staff inside. Police had to fight off rioters to free the busboys.

The government fears more outbursts of violence from both sides of the religious divide--meaning Israel itself could be turned into a real battleground. Television stations did not broadcast the full footage of two Israeli soldiers being lynched by Palestinians in the West Bank, out of concern that it would prompt reprisals against Israeli Arabs. "It's a very, very ugly situation," says Bishara. "Here, in this democracy, you have to fear for your life because of your ethnicity."

--By Matt Rees/Jerusalem