The Arab media has taken a keen and unusual interest in Israel’s fears of an imminent terror attack in revenge for the killing of Hamas leader Ahmad Yasin on Monday.
Israelis fear the worst as they try to avoid public places, in particular buses, coffee shops and open markets, leaving home for only the bare essentials.
Israel often increases its state of alert upon obtaining information about potential assailants on the loose, or at times of heightened tensions, but this never gets more than a one-liner in the Arab press.
This cartoon appeared in the London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat after the killing. The Arab world maintains that the killing will backfire on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his policies. Sharon is shown here tied to a bomb that reads “Palestinian rage.”
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(A-Sharq Al-Awsat)
However, although security has been tightened around Sharon and other senior officials, Israelis fear it will yet again be the ordinary folk who bear the brunt of the raging terror. “Fright in Israel following Yasin’s martyred death,” read a headline in the United Arab Emirates’ Al-Ittihad daily. The paper quoted Israeli sources saying that streets in Israel’s largest cities emptied out once news of Yasin’s assassination broke, for fear of revenge from Palestinian factions.
This cartoon appeared in Al-Ittihad two days after the attack. The wheelchair is symbolic of Yasin who was paraplegic most of his life.
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(Al-Ittihad)
“Israel is in a state of unprecedented alert waiting for a revenge attack to occur,” read a headline on the front page of the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam on Thursday.
The unrest reaches beyond Israel’s general public and its authorities. Jerusalem has been teeming with foreign journalists since Monday, strolling down the city’s now half-empty main streets so as not to miss out when the looming attack strikes.
Due to distance and also possibly to problems of accessibility, most of the reports in the Arab media on the fear in Israel after Yasin’s killing relied on “panic reports” in the Israeli media. The latter has been dealing with the public’s anxiety obsessively since Monday. A reporter from Israel’s Channel 2 Television took to the streets the day of the killing and approached a young woman at a bus stop. “What? They killed Sheikh Yasin?” she exclaimed, and was filmed leaving the bus stop hurriedly and jumping into a taxi.
This cartoon appeared in the Qatari daily Al-Watan.
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(Al-Watan)
Al-Ayyam described the new means of security that have been applied in the major cities and strategic targets. The report labeled the situation one of “hysteria” with literally thousands of soldiers deployed along the Green Line and in crowded towns and cities.
Al-Ayyam also reported on the beefing up of security in strategic targets such as Ben Gurion international airport and around politicians and military chiefs, for fear that terror organizations will aim straight for the top.
The Hizbullah television station Al-Manar also quoted the Israeli media in reports about an Israeli call-in support center for terror victims. Their incoming calls have increased tremendously since the Yasin killing. Al-Manar showed an Israeli operator talking to an anxious mother of school-aged children who has been suffering from chronic headaches, insomnia and lack of appetite since Monday.
“Since the crime of assassinating Yasin, Israeli cities have been in a state of anxiety,” reported the London-based Al-Quds Al-‘Arabi. They described the empty buses and shops and quoted the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot which called Israel a “country of fear.”
The reports in the Arab press are generally factual and do not report on the Israeli anxiety with glee. Where the Israeli and Arab media often differ in their views, in this case the reportage is alike and all agree that the fear is justified and a retaliation terror attack is pending.