In the face of growing rage among the country’s minority Arab people over Israel’s air strikes in Gaza and police raids on Jerusalem’s Mosque Al Aqsa, violence in mixed Jewish-Arabian cities in Israel flared early on Wednesday.
After reports came on Tuesday of Arab fire to a synagogue and Jews stealing a car that was driven by an Arab resident, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a state of emergency in Lod near Tel Aviv.
“We have lost control of the city and the streets,” Lod Mayor Yair Revivo lamented to Israel’s Channel 12 News. Garbage bins, knocked over and set ablaze, could be seen nearby.
Security officials have reportedly assigned the Lod from the occupied West Bank to 16 border police companies for violent treatment.
The Arab minority of Israel, Palestinian by heritage and Israeli by nationality, is mainly descended from the Palestinians who lived under Ottoman rule and then colonial British rule before they remained in Israel after the creation of the country in 1947.
Most of them speak both Arabic and Hebrew, with a sense of parenthood in the occupied West Bank and Gaza with their fellow Palestinians.
And they frequently denounce systemic discrimination and unfair access to housing, health services and education.
Police arrested dozens of people overnight, including Umm al-Fahm along West Bank border, Jisr Al-Zarqa along the coast of the Mediterranean, both in Lod and in major Arab towns of central and northern Israel.
“We condemn that our people’s solidarity and cohesion with our brethren in Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip is being channelled through acts of sabotage to public and private property, as is now happening at Umm al-Fahm’s entrance,” said the town’s mayor, Samir Mahamid.
Most of them speak both Arabic and Hebrew, with a sense of parenthood in the occupied West Bank and Gaza with their fellow Palestinians.
And they frequently denounce systemic discrimination and unfair access to housing, health services and education.
Police arrested dozens of people overnight, including Umm al-Fahm along West Bank border, Jisr Al-Zarqa along the coast of the Mediterranean, both in Lod and in major Arab towns of central and northern Israel.
