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They aren't sure who to blame

They're Arabs living in Israel, putting them right in the middle of the violence. But opinions are divided on who is at fault.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published July 21, 2006

MAJD EL-KURUM, Israel - Aslan Hamoud was in his house in this Arab Israeli village when he heard what sounded like a car crash. He ran outside to look - and was hit by shrapnel from a rocket fired by the radical Arab group Hezbollah.

The same rocket, which fell just two blocks from a mosque, also knocked over tombstones in a Muslim cemetery and shattered windows in several Arab-owned businesses.

Now Hamoud, 18, awaits surgery on his injured shoulder while his father bemoans the violence affecting Arabs as well as Jews in Israel.

"Both sides are guilty," says Mahmoud Hamoud, whose pet store was among the damaged. "When Hezbollah tries to hit Israeli places, it hits innocent people, and when Israel hits Hezbollah, it hits innocent people. It can't go on."

These are difficult times for everyone in northern Israel, which has been bombarded by Hezbollah rockets and missiles for more than a week. But while the attacks have united Jews in outrage against Hezbollah, they have stirred a more complex set of emotions among Israel's Arab citizens who find themselves the victims of other Arabs.

On Wednesday, a Hezbollah rocket slammed into Nazareth, killing two Arab brothers, 9 and 3, as they played in the street. Rabiah and Mahmoud Talussi were buried Thursday.

Many Arab Israelis in the line of fire are angry, but they are reluctant to condemn Hezbollah alone. Nor do they unequivocally criticize Israel, the country in which they make up a fifth of the 7-million citizens.

Instead, they see the violence on both sides as a symptom of a deep-rooted conflict that cannot be resolved by force.

"To sit down and talk is the best thing," says Rafik Shehady of Kfar Yasif, an Arab village north of Haifa where several rockets have landed.

"I want to go back to a normal life. Everyone feels this way."

At 28, Shehady has a wife, a daughter and a job in a supermarket. He stresses that he has many Jewish friends.

"You don't see it on TV," he says. "It's a more personal thing."

There is substantial intermingling of Arabs and Jews in this part of the country, which is relatively far from Palestinian areas where anti-Israel sentiment runs high because of years of Israeli occupation. Most suicide bombings have occurred farther south, where Israel's controversial security barrier was erected to keep out terrorists.

In northern cities like Akko and Nahariya, Arabs and Jews often work together in restaurants and other businesses. Issam Khoury, an Arab reception clerk at a seafront hotel, has invited Jewish colleagues to his daughter's wedding Saturday.

He's not happy, though, about the conditions in which it will be held.

"It's very bad," he says as an Israeli helicopter buzzes loudly over his home. "We hear boom, boom all the time. It's not a good environment."

A Christian Arab who has a picture of Jesus on his front door, Khoury does not like Hezbollah, a Muslim group that wants a regionwide Islamic state.

But he thinks the failure to resolve the issue of Shebaa Farms - a tiny area of south Lebanon claimed at various times by Israel, Lebanon and Syria - gives Hezbollah an excuse to attack the Israeli "occupiers."

At the same time, he says, Hezbollah's militancy gives Israel an excuse to attack Lebanon.

"If we solve the problem of Shebaa Farms, we deprive Hezbollah and Israel of this excuse," Khoury says. "I think with the Lebanese, there should not be other reasons to be in a state of war with Israel."

As with many Arabs in Israel, though, Khoury's feelings are more complex when it comes to the Palestinian issue. Arabs here feel greater kinship with Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - many of whom fled Israel after it became a state in 1948 - than they do with Arabs in Lebanon.

Khoury does not support Hamas which, like Hezbollah, he considers too uncompromising in its refusal to accept Israel's existence. But he doesn't think the Israeli government has done enough to resolve the Mideast conflict.

"Why should Israel occupy and depress another people, saying every time there is no partner for peace?"

Although overshadowed by the intense fighting with Hezbollah, Israel's recent forays into Gaza have angered Arab Israelis and reinforced a feeling that they are second-class citizens.

Many Arab villages in Israel are rundown and lack the public bomb shelters found in predominantly Jewish cities.

Arab Israelis often complain of job discrimination: Studies say Arab men earn almost 40 percent less than Jewish men and three times as many Arabs as Jews live in poverty. While hundreds of thousands of Jews have fled northern Israel since Hezbollah began attacking, most Arabs have stayed put because they can't afford to leave.

"No, this is not a safe place, but where would I go?" asks Hamoud, as his teenage son recovers from his shrapnel wounds.

Israel's Arab citizens are not required to serve in the military, largely because of a common view that they could not be trusted in a war against fellow Arabs. Indeed, some Arab Israelis have aided terrorists, and one became a suicide bomber in 2001.

Other Arabs, however, volunteer for military duty, aware that the contacts built during service can be the ticket to good jobs when they get out.

Despite tensions aggravated by the latest violence, Khoury and others insist that Arabs and Jews not only can live together peacefully, but often do.

"You see," he says, gesturing at the group on his patio that includes a Jewish friend, "we work together, we eat together, we debate about the political situation. We don't agree, because many things are not accomplished, but still we can talk."

Susan Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.

[Last modified July 21, 2006, 00:55:15]