Young children have been slain, severe injuries sustained, and damage done to private homes, vehicles and city infrastructure.
But the last six days have also borne witness to something more insidious, with Arab rioters laying waste to the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod and conducting violent rampages in Haifa and Acre.
In the wake of this violence, Jewish mobs have attacked Arab citizens, including severely beating an Arab man in Bat Yam, rock throwing at Arab residents and cars in Lod, and in one incident an Arab citizen was stabbed close to the Mahaneh Yehuda market in Jerusalem.
The long-running conflict with Hamas in Gaza is deadly, and represents one of the greatest challenges to the security and stability of the State of Israel.
But the interethnic violence that erupted over the last week threatens to tear the country apart from within.
LOD AND its 77,000 residents, a quarter of whom are Arab and the rest Jewish, has been at the forefront of the clashes this week.
The violence started on Monday following the extreme tensions in Jerusalem and fierce Arab riots on the Temple Mount in the compound of the al-Aqsa Mosque, during which police used stun grenades and other means to disperse violent rioters, including within the mosque itself.
The riots in Lod continued into the night, in which Jewish property and vehicles were burned, rocks and petrol bombs were thrown at homes, and a yeshiva belonging to the young religious-Zionist community in the city was set ablaze.
Jewish residents became increasingly anxious and panicked by the large mobs of Arab rioters, leading to an incident in which Musa Hasuna, a 25-year-old Arab resident allegedly involved in the riots, was shot and killed by a Jewish resident.
Riots continued on Tuesday and Wednesday night, with Jewish residents decrying the failure of the police to protect them and restore order to the city, alleging that the police on Monday and Tuesday night failed to turn up for hours after the disturbances were reported.
Residents in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood, where Jews and Arabs live shoulder to shoulder, in the same apartment buildings and on the same streets, have been shocked and traumatized by the violence directed toward them.
Rivi Abramovich, a 28-year-old mother of two living in the neighborhood, was in tears Wednesday morning, overcome by the assault on her home.
“People who I see in the stairwell, people who help me bring the groceries inside, my trust in them has been damaged when I saw my neighbor go down and join the riots,” said Abramovich.
At one point during Tuesday night’s riots, Color Red rocket-warning sirens sounded around Lod due to Hamas rocket fire on the city.
Abramovich recounted an extraordinary incident in which she and her family took refuge in a bomb shelter, to be joined by a rioter still holding a rock in his hand.
“We were taking cover with people who beforehand wanted to kill us,” she exclaimed.
“I said, that’s it. Until then, I believed that we can live here well; we did so much good in this neighborhood; it has improved so much. They have simply destroyed everything; everything good that was here has been destroyed.... I have no more trust. I’m not certain we can live here well anymore.”
Yuval Hovav, 28 and father of two, has also been deeply wounded by the violence.
Following the riots on Monday night, he took his family to safety in Jerusalem, and returned to the city on Wednesday morning.
Upon entering his apartment, however, he discovered his home turned upside down, his family’s belongings strewn everywhere, prayer books and Bibles on the floor, and every room ransacked.
His car had also been burned to cinders.
“I have lived in the neighborhood for two years. We have lived with them [Arab residents] well, but since two days ago they have become different people; they have turned from neighbors into terrorists,” said Hovav.
“This morning [Wednesday] I come to the house and find it broken into and destroyed. They broke in through the garden of my neighbor, a neighbor who I thought was my friend. They went into his garden, they cut the bars on the windows, and broke and burned and set on fire all the coexistence that has been here in recent years.”
Hovav said that he and others in the young religious community, what is known as the Garin Torani or Jewish Seed Program, have worked together with their Arab neighbors, noting that he himself helped restore lighting to the stairwell and public areas of his building, which houses Jews and Arabs, after years without it due to debts to the electric company.
“Everything we have done has been to increase the light in this neighborhood, and they come and increase the darkness, and burn things and throw stones at us, and burn our vehicles, try to harm us, curse us,” said Hovav.
“They have stuck a knife in my back,” he said, choked with emotion and holding back his tears.
Muhammad, 32, and father of two, who declined to give his family name, blamed the violence on what he said was incitement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lod Mayor Yair Revivo.
He said that Netanyahu’s desire to stay in power had led to rising tensions in the country, and that the result was the riots in Lod and other places.
Muhammad was, however, reticent to discuss the riots themselves, when asked who was directly responsible for the burned vehicles and properties in Ramat Eshkol.
“It doesn’t matter who burned vehicles here and who burned vehicles there. Vehicles have insurance; they can be replaced,” he said.
“But someone who was killed – can he be replaced?” he demanded, in reference to Hasuna, who he said was a cousin of his. “They took someone’s life!”
Muhammad said that Arab residents of Lod had been incensed by the killing, and argued, as others have, that Hasuna was not involved in the riots, although the Jewish residents have strongly disputed this version of events.
And he, along with numerous other Arab residents this reporter spoke with, expressed explicit hostility to the young religious-Zionist community in the city, numbering some 1,000 families, which began moving into the city around a decade ago.
Although few specific accusations against the community were made, sentiment toward this group among the Arab residents was without doubt unfavorable.
Muhammad criticized the religious-Zionist residents for openly bearing arms, including assault rifles, around the neighborhood, saying such behavior was offensive and unnecessary.
“People walk around with guns, with M-16s, they do patrols. Why bring guns and provoke people? That’s how it began,” he said.
THABET ABU RASS, a co-executive director of the coexistence organization The Abraham Initiative, said that the riots in Lod had both short-term and long-term causes.
Like Muhammad and other Lod residents, Abu Rass blamed Netanyahu for the immediate problems, and said that slated evictions of Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem from homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood; the closure of the Damascus Gate steps outside the Old City of Jerusalem during Ramadan; and the violence in and around al-Aqsa Mosque had invoked the ire of many Arab citizens around the country, including in Lod.
“This is the most important season for Muslims; these are the holiest days of Ramadan, especially last Saturday night; and people felt humiliated and insulted,” said Abu Rass.
But, he continued, a deeper problem is what he said was discrimination against the Arab minority in Lod, in terms of housing construction for the sector, rubbish collection, and the use of public spaces.
“Underneath is a sense of ownership, who does the city belong to. When you name public spaces for IDF generals and military units, including Rehavam ‘Gandhi’ Ze’evi, one of the most racist generals in Israel, this is not what should be done in a shared city,” said Abu Rass. “This city should be for all of its residents.”
And like Arab residents of Lod, Abu Rass was also critical of the Garin Torani religious-Zionist community, saying that it had received favorable treatment in terms of new housing projects, pointing in particular to the Ramat Elyashiv development of several modern apartment buildings abutting the Old City of Lod with its large Arab population.
Of the riots themselves, Abu Rass said that “there are some young people in Lod who don’t obey any law,” and said they should be brought to justice, but that “the overwhelming majority of Lod are normative people who should be treated equally.”
Speaking more broadly about the Arab riots around the country, he said that he believes one of the main problems is governmental neglect of Arab neighborhoods in mixed Jewish-Arab cities, like Lod, Haifa and Acre.
Abu Rass noted that a 2015 government resolution had directed some NIS 9.7 billion toward Arab cities, towns and municipalities, but that no money had been allocated to Arab neighborhoods in mixed cities, leading to ongoing neglect.
“I believe the disparity between Arab and Jewish neighborhoods, and the lower socioeconomic status of the Arab citizens is one of the major reasons for the eruption of violence in those cities,” he said.
He noted in particular the lack of building permits for the Arab sector in Lod, subsequent illegal Arab construction, followed by the demolition of such homes by the municipality.
BACK IN Lod, sentiment was divided among the two communities about the possibility of coexistence in the future, despite the fact that both groups will continue, at least for the moment, to live one next to the other.
“We always lived in peace. I have Jewish friends, some whom come eat and drink with us and break the [Ramadan] fast with us. There were many Jews at my wedding, and I was at the wedding of many Jews. I work with a Jew; I grew up with a Jew,” said Muhammad.
“It’s aways possible to restore coexistence. In Lod there was always respect between Jews and Arabs.”
But the Jewish residents and communal leaders are far less certain.
Elivera Kolihman, a member of the Lod Municipality for the Lod Beytenu faction, said she had been shocked by the violence, and that it had made her question the intercommunal relations she thought had developed.
“I have lived in this city for 25 years. We lived in coexistence, and now I’m asking myself if this was true coexistence, or if it was always just a game,” said Kolihman.
She acknowledged the Arab community had certain complaints, but said the riots were no way to deal with them, insisting that large amounts of money had been spent on communal infrastructure in the Arab sector, including community centers, schools, kindergartens and roads.
“It was never perfect here, but we always respected each other; we worked together. There were various conflicts... but conflict between Jewish and Arab residents on a nationalist basis never happened.
“It will be difficult to return to the table with the Arab members of the municipal council, support budgets [for the Arab sector], support project developments. I don’t know how to turn the wheel back and how to heal the wound, if it is even possible.”
“I don’t know how I will live next to my neighbor now.... I don’t know what will be with me,” said Hovav emotionally, when asked if he is afraid for the safety of his family.
“Despite it all, though, I do not intend to leave. I’m not afraid, and I do not intend to allow Lod to turn into an Arab city. We are in the heart of the State of Israel. Israeli flags fly here from the window; they will continue to fly here, because this is our country, although we respect everyone who lives here,” he said, while standing amid the wreckage of his home.
“We believe in the State of Israel. We believe in the Jewish citizens of Israel. I thought I believed in the Arab citizens as well, but I have apparently been corrected.”•