I NSIGHT
ZE'EV CHAFETS
Israel Correspondent
imcha Holzberg is
Israel's most famous
do-gooder. Known as
the "father of the wounded,"
he has made a career of look-
ing after the incapacitated,
particularly soldiers
crippled in Israel's wars.
Thus, the staff at Asaf
Harofe Hospital were not
surprised to see Holzberg ar-
rive with an armful of radio-
tape recorders, gifts to the
Arab victims of this week's
shooting incident in the Tel
Aviv suburb of Rishon Le-
Zion.
Holzberg is used to a warm
reception, but this time he
was surprised. When he ap-
proached one of the wound-
ed, Abu Aza Hallil, and
offered him a tape recorder,
he was rudely accosted by
Faiz Abu Azna, the patient's
cousin. "What do you think,
that we'll accept your
presents?" he demanded,
knocking the package to the
floor. "One day you shoot us,
the next day you bring us
gifts. We want peace, not
presents."
Abu Azna's reaction was
typical of the heated re-
sponse of Palestinian Arabs
to the shooting, by a 21-year-
old Israeli, Ami Popper,
which claimed the lives of
seven Arab workers, and left
11 more injured.
The Gaza Strip and West
Bank exploded into the
worst rioting since the early
days of the intifada, and in
the two days following the
massacre, 10 demonstrators
were killed, and hundreds
wounded. The army slapped
a tough curfew on most of
the occupied territories, in
an effort to keep street
violence under control.
Even more troubling was
the reaction of Israel's
650,000 Arab citizens. From
the Galilee to the Negev,
they staged violent demon-
strations, hurled rocks and
molotov cocktails at passing
motorists, waved Palestin-
ian flags and cursed the
police in Arabic and Hebrew.
One Israeli paper sum-
marized the rioting with a
The Intifada
Escalates
The killing, in a Tel Aviv suburb, of seven
Arab workers by an Israeli has touched off
violence that seems all out of proportion to
the incident.
terse headline: "Nazareth —
Like Gaza."
Ever since the outbreak of
the Palestinian uprising, in
December 1987, Israelis
have dreaded the possibility
that it might leak across the
pre-1967 Green Line border,
into Israel itself. Indeed, in
the past 30 months, there
has been a steady increase in
the number of
"'nationalistic" crimes car-
ried out by Israeli Arabs
against Jewish targets.
But this week's rioting, in
which some of the young
demonstrators wore hoods in,
imitation of their West Bank
and Gaza cousins, has sharp-
ly escalated the fear that the
intifada is coining closer to
home.
"The violence is an expres-
sion of the ongoing, and
growing, adoption of intifada
norms by some sectors of the
Israeli Arab population,"
said Ehud Olmart, the min-
ister in charge of Arab Af-
fairs.
Some experts cautioned
against drawing hasty con-
clusions about the spread of
the uprising into Israel.
"What took place in
Nazareth is not the in-
tifada," wrote Uzi
Machenaimi, a well known
analyst. "Talk about the in-
tifada creeping beyond the
Green Line is both
misleading and mistaken."
Machenaimi blamed dis-
crimination against Israeli
Arabs for the outburst, and
cautioned that if steps are
not taken to correct in-
justices, "there will be
events that make what's
been happening in the oc-
cupied territories look like
child's play."
Olmart acknowledged that
there is, indeed, discrimina-
tion against Israeli Arabs,
and called on his fellow
cabinet ministers to take ac-
tion to redress imbalances in
housing, land allocation and
infra-structure in the Arab
sector.
At the same time, he
pointed out that rioting
cannot be regarded as a
natural, spontaneous re-
sponse to the murder of
Arabs by a psychopath.
"They are losing their
sense of proportion," he said.
"Several weeks ago, Mussa
Halabi of Gaza was caught
after killing a number of
Jews. I don't remember the
country going crazy, or dem-
onstrations . . . There are
people trying to pour oil on
this fire, for political
reasons."
Almost as troubling as the
violent response of the Arabs
to the shooting incident has
been the apparent indif-
ference, or even approval, of
many Jewish Israelis. On
hearing a radio report that
the killer, Avi Popper, was
apprehended, one patron at
Sandu's Romanian Restau-
rant in Tel Aviv cursed in
Hebrew.
"Finally somebody stands
up to the Arabs and does the
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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