Let's not get mixed up. We can assume that the State Comptroller's report on the failures of the government and the leadership in the rioting of May 2021 will place the responsibility for the lack of governability and vacuum of authority on the shoulders of the police. As we know, the police left the field in the early days of the violence, essentially leaving Jewish residents of mixed cities to their fate. Then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Public Security Minister Amir Ohana are also responsible.
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However, the conclusions for the security establishment and the government echelon must not gloss over one main fact – that it wasn't the police, or Netanyahu, or Ohana, who were rioting and attacking Jews last May. It was thousands of Arab Israelis who were revolting against the state and opening another front. The rioters identified as "Palestinians," not as Arab Israelis. That was how they felt then, and that is how they still feel. They were raised not only on the blood libel "Al-Aqsa is in danger," but also on a type of thinking that views the establishment of Israel as a catastrophe (Nakba). Even the issue of "return" – not as a theoretical matter, but as a practical demand and hope – was present during the riots.
No less serious was the backing that some of the Arab Israeli political and religious leadership gave to the rioters, sometimes quietly, sometimes publicly. We should hope the comptrollers looked into their part in what transpired.
It's hard to forget the words of former MK Mohammed Barakeh, chairman of the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee. In a speech on Palestinian TV last November, Barakeh explained that "Jerusalem has dear sisters – Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Lod, and Ramle … during the last Intifada, the focus of resistance to the Zionist oppression was in these cities, which they tried to eulogize, pervert, and remove from the map of Palestine. They rose up and said, 'Palestine is here.' It used to be called Palestine, and is called Palestine again."
MKs from Ra'am and the Joint Arab List who visited Acre after the riots and demanded that the Arab rioters be released from jail are indirectly responsible for stirring up the Arab Israeli sector. The sad fact is that the system responsible for Israel's public security has yet to reach deterrence when it comes to Arab Israelis. Only recently, Jews were attacked by Arabs. In Rishon Lezion, Jews were attacked while driving past the Yes Planet complex, and Israeli kayaking in the Jordan River were also attacked.
These "small" incidents are part of an event that has been ongoing for over a year – a widespread performance of displays of ownership and seizures of our public space by Arabs, mostly youth in a demonstrative, blatant, vocal, wild, and challenging manner. All of this carries clear ethno-religious characteristics, like the violence during Guardian of the Walls.
Israel might have achieved deterrence against Hamas in Gaza, but deterrence for the Arabs of Israel is still elusive. The responsibility, therefore, lies not only with the police and the government, but also – and maybe primarily – with some Arab Israelis and their leaders.
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