Rhodes has been in a state of emergency since last week, when a series of vicious and unprecedented inter-ethnic violence broke out between Jews and Arab Israelis.

Suliman Zabarqa (Suliman Zabarqa) faced some police officers who were parked on the walls outside the restaurants, which were also closed. He was asking why they stood by when Jewish mobs burned his property.

Zabarqa, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, said that the police did not act as they should, allowing hardline Israeli nationalists to take the law into their hands “from outside Rhodes Town.”

The neighbors are now afraid of each other

When the fighting between Israeli and Palestinian militants in Gaza began more than a week ago, the riots began after Israeli police disrupted demonstrations organized by Palestinian Arab Israelis.

On May 10, a man named Musa Hassuna was shot and killed by a Jew. According to reports, the next day, Yigal Yehoshua, a Jew, was hit in the head by a brick and was attacked by Arab youths. He died of casualties on Monday.

The anger disappeared from the bottle. Five synagogues were burned to death, and Arab Israelis reportedly carried out bomb attacks on their houses. Mobs occupied the streets, and the unrest quickly spread to other mixed-race cities in Israel.

Now, people who used to call neighbors to each other are afraid of each other.

Tamer Nafar (Tamer Nafar) said: “I am afraid of our lives. I have two children, and I am unarmed.”

He said: “Look how beautiful it is.” “You have a mosque, a church, and a synagogue.”

Nafar is a famous Palestinian rapper who was born in Rhodes. He is also an activist, and he said that the recent anger that has flowed to the streets among Arab Israelis stems from decades of racism and discrimination.

“I mean, Israel doesn’t think I am Israeli. [national] The national anthem speaks of Jewish land and ignores Muslims,” ??he said.

“The things we are going through, including housing and house demolition, can only be seen by the media when the problem escalates, and we have been working hard to engage in dialogue for many years.”

Nafar said that on the second day of the riots, he and his wife witnessed armed Jewish hardliners arriving at the scene.

“So, I called the police because I was a real taxpayer and they took my money every week.”

He said that the police finally hung up on him.

The arrival of immigrants changed the character of the city

Palestinian Arabs make up about 20% of the population of Israel and 30% of the population of Rhode Island.

However, in recent years, in Lod, the migration to the cities as hardline nationalists and religious settlers is part of the Garin Torani movement.

Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu of the Israeli think tank “Abraham Initiatives” said: “The main strategy is to establish settlements in mixed cities.”

He said: “To Judaize areas where there are more Arabs or where there are ongoing conflicts between communities, or where it is necessary to show Jewish sovereignty or take back the area (if you will),”.

The arrival of settlers has slowly changed the characteristics of certain areas of the city. When the riot broke out in Rhodes, Bailey Suliznunu said that Israeli settlements in the West Bank demanded reinforcements.

At the corner of the religious triangle, the car drove into a huge church, still bearing the scars of last week’s riots.

Young people wearing ethnic religious Jewish uniforms – knitted kippas, long beards and earrings – are about to participate in a volunteer meeting. They are establishing a community observation team to protect the property of Jewish families who fled during the turmoil.

The police were standing guard outside, standing across from several dilapidated apartment buildings, with Israeli flags hanging on some windows. Arab women transported groceries into the building and climbed the stairs.

“We are standing in front of a building [where] In the past ten years, two Jewish families and four, six or seven Arab families have been living together. “The physicist and mother of six children, Ayelet Wadler, said he lives a few blocks away.

“They have been helping each other to change tires and carry food. On Tuesday night, Monday night, suddenly, their neighbors have lived with them for ten years, and they pointed out to the thugs,’This is their people, this It’s a Jewish car. Burn it.”

Wadler lived in Lod for 15 years. She said that she believed that Arab Israelis were responsible for what happened and was happy to see people across the street gathered together, some of them staring at bystanders and looking menacing.

She said: “I didn’t see the police.” “I saw someone defending the house.”

Wadler said that she was very frustrated that many Jewish families did not feel safe enough to stay in their homes.

“They are refugees from their own country. This is incredible. This is impossible.”

“They did not disappear, nor did we disappear”

She failed to link her comments with the history of fellow Palestinians, which fully illustrates the challenges facing reconciliation and understanding in the country.

The Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line between Israel and the occupied territories referred to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 as a disaster (al Nakba). In the ensuing war, thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced to flee the Israeli army.

Watch | The ongoing conflict has exacerbated tensions in mixed Israeli cities:

While the pressure to reach a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militants in Gaza is increasing, the internal pressure on Israel is also increasing as Israel responds to the long-standing anger and disagreement within its own borders. 5:37

Berry Suliznunu said that many Jewish Israelis don’t understand history at all.

“They don’t know that in Israel, about one-fifth of the Arab population is also an internal refugee, including most Arabs living in Rhode Island. They are refugees themselves because they were destroyed 48 years later. Arrived in the entire Israeli village on Rhode Island.”

Likewise, many Palestinian Arab Israelis do not understand the heartbreaking tremor that many Jews feel when they mention similar Bogota attacks on Jews.

“most [Arab Israelis] Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said: “I don’t understand the meaning and so-called pain packs carried by the Jews. They don’t even know.”

It is hard to imagine how the city will advance. Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said the problem with the Arab-Israeli community is not with Rhodes’s Jewish community, but with the national religious settlers who infiltrated the country.

But they seem to be more and more entrenched as a settlement in an Israeli city.

Suliman Zabarqa firmly believes that this is due to the local leadership and that the mayor only serves the interests of the Jewish community.

“I live in the state of Israel, and I have the rights of any Israeli. But the state did not provide me with [them]. I hope the Mayor of Rhodes can treat everyone in the same way. I hope he pays attention to the Arab department in this town. “

Tamer Nafar said this is a symptom of a deeper problem.

He said: “When the dialogue between us is’this is my country, this is the land of the Jews, not yours’, the color of the whole dialogue is superior.”

“They need to understand that coexistence requires the existence of two aspects. They will not disappear, and we will not disappear.”