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Israel’s Streets Are Burning and There’s No One To Put Out the Fire
A garbage container is set on fire as during clashes between Israeli police officers and rioting Arab-Israelis violating a night-time curfew in the mixed Israeli-Arab city of Lod due to tensions between Jews and Arabs in the city, on May 12, 2021. (Oren Ziv/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Israel’s Streets Are Burning and There’s No One To Put Out the Fire

Violent riots have engulfed Israel and citizens are complaining of police powerlessness

“We hear the muezzin [the caller to prayer] from the mosque screaming terrifyingly, calling the youths to gather and commit a pogrom against the Jews. They break stones from the sidewalk, so they’ll have something to throw and plan how to attack Jews,” Gil Gabai, a resident of the mixed Arab and Jewish city of Lod, told Israeli radio station Galei Israel. “As this is happening, we call the cops and show them the house from which shots were fired at us, but they simply do nothing. No one is protecting us.”

Gabai’s words reflect the complaints of many Jewish residents in Israel’s mixed cities in recent days, who accuse the police of ignoring citizens facing life-threatening situations, as violent riots engulf the streets of a country in flames. Some civilians have even taken to arranging civilian security patrols.

Politicians also have joined in criticizing the police. Lawmaker Ayelet Shaked of the Yamina party tweeted on Thursday that “Israel Police has raised a white flag.” New Hope party head Gideon Sa’ar blamed the police’s “miserable conduct in the events of the last few days” on the wrong appointments to critical positions at the political and professional levels.

Concurrently with Hamas bombarding Israel’s cities with rockets and Israel retaliating by bombing the organization’s assets and operatives in the Gaza Strip, the country is engulfed in a wave of riots that has plunged it into chaos. Angry Arab and Jewish mobs have taken to the streets in the evenings this past week, lighting cars on fire, burning synagogues, and ransacking stores.

Most shocking is a series of lynches and attempted lynches that have taken place in cities throughout the country. The first was on Sunday when a policeman saved a Jewish driver from angry Arab protesters in east Jerusalem after they showered his car with rocks and dragged him out of the car. Jews who in recent days have entered the scenes of Arab riots have been surrounded and severely attacked and some have required hospitalization. On Wednesday, an Arab Israeli man was pulled from his car by an angry Jewish mob and severely beaten in the central Israel city of Bat Yam in an attack captured on video. On the same day, a Jewish schoolteacher in the mixed city of Acre was surrounded by Arabs “and simply torn to pieces with building blocks and metal rods,” Micky Rosenfeld, Israel Police spokesperson, told The Media Line. The victim was brought to the hospital with severe injuries.

In response to these events, groups of far-right Jewish Israelis have organized to gather in points of friction. Following the riots in Bat Yam, ultra-nationalist Jews shouting “Death to Arabs” smashed windows and destroyed property in Arab-owned shops, including a popular ice cream parlor. Jewish journalists who were present were also attacked.

The infighting is seen as a threat to hopeful attempts to advance coexistence between Jews and Arabs in the country. Lod, at the center of the present violence, is sometimes referred to as a “model city” of coexistence, in which Jews and Arabs live side by side, in the same neighborhoods and the same buildings.

Menachem Gerstman, a Jewish Israeli English teacher who has lived in Lod as part of a national-religious community for the past seven years, told The Media Line that recent events came as “a very big shock.” He said that he had friendly professional relations with Arab colleagues in local schools and that Jews like himself who have come to Lod in recent years have generally had good relations with their Arab neighbors. But, he said, “it will be very hard to rehabilitate” what they once had.

Gerstman said that on Wednesday and Thursday night, when teenage members of La Familia, a group of far-right football hooligans, showed up in Lod, “looking for trouble,” he and other members of his community turned them away and called the police to prevent attacks on their Arab neighbors. Members of the community spent much of Thursday night protecting Arab stores and property from attack by Jewish extremists, and guarding their own homes from possible “revenge attacks” by Arabs. On Friday morning, Jewish and Arab residents of the neighborhood met in an attempt to calm the atmosphere.

The riots in Jerusalem began with angry protests that turned violent, due to clashes in Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem and a legal dispute threatening to evacuate Palestinian families from homes in east Jerusalem, which in turn triggered the nationwide eruption, as well as the escalation between Gaza and Israel.

Rosenfeld, the police spokesman, adds that officers are “present wherever there is friction; however, with thousands of incidents in recent days, the police has had to prioritize responding to life-threatening situations.” On the night between Monday and Tuesday, when riots in Lod broke out, “there were 70 incidents in the city. … I am talking about 70 incidents of stone-throwing, people and property attacked,” he said.

Contributing to the pressure on the Israel Police is the escalation of hostilities with Gaza, adding to its responsibilities. “We respond to each [rocket] fall,” said Rosenfeld. With each rocket fall, police teams arrive to scan the area for explosives and safeguard the lives of citizens nearby.

Rosenfeld also pointed out that in the mixed city of Lod, which has seen some of the worst violence this week, the Arab and Jewish populations are completely integrated, many times living in the same buildings. It is far easier to separate the populations and ensure order and peace when they reside in different neighborhoods, he said. Additionally, it is more difficult to respond to events occurring inside buildings. “We are talking about two doors, two apartments on the same floor, mixed neighborhoods, in which a person opens his door and wants to murder the person in front of him, the Jewish family or the woman and child wanting to go down to the grocery store,” Rosenfeld said.

Dr. Carmit Padan, research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, says there are several factors making it difficult for the police to end the violence. “The police are spread in a lot of areas, and that is causing them difficulties,” Padan told The Media Line.

In addition to the huge number of incidents that are putting a strain on the Israel Police’s workforce, the institution reached this time carrying additional baggage. “We shouldn’t forget that the police is subject to political attacks, no backup from the government, and the public has no confidence in it … a new commissioner has just entered office after the organization has had two years without a police chief,” she said. The police were criticized for their actions in the context of the weekly protests against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with some blaming them for using excessive force. It was also blamed, at least partially, for the Mount Meron disaster at the end of last month, in which more than 40 people died in a stampede.

“And every time the police uses any kind of force against the public, it is under heavy scrutiny, so I think that it has come [to the situation] with great anxiety,” says Padan. She adds that the Israel Police focuses more on criminal activities, while the Border Police are responsible for dealing with civil unrest. “It’s not exactly their main line of work,” she said.

As a solution to the inability of the police to contain the riots and protect Israel’s citizens, many politicians are pushing to use the military in mixed cities to enforce order, but this has faced staunch opposition. Notably, Defense Minister Benny Gantz has opposed this path. “The minister has come out saying that it isn’t for the soldiers of the IDF, the nation’s army, to stand against citizens in tasks of policing and law enforcement,” the minister’s spokesperson told The Media Line. “They aren’t trained for that, and it lacks a legal and moral basis,” he added.

Padan adds that “the moment an army uses violence against citizens, it goes against the rules of the democratic framework.”

On the subject of bringing the army in to enforce peace in the streets, Rosenfeld says, “We’re not there, we’re not there yet. We have enough capabilities and enough force that can take on the task.” However, he calls on politicians and mayors, saying “we must convince people not to take part in it, it is unacceptable that people are taking the law into their own hands.”

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