“Israeli society will explode” IS terrorist militia claims attack in Brussels

Hassan Jabareen smiles and invites people into his small office in the Israeli coastal city of Haifa. Jabareen, a short, plump man with a full beard and a flat cap, orders coffee with cardamom.

“We’ve had crises before, but it’s never been this bad,” says the 59-year-old, sipping from the plastic cup. The Arab with Palestinian roots heads the organization Adalah (Arabic for ‘justice’) in Haifa, which says it stands up for the rights of the Arab-Israeli minority.

Nearly 20 percent of Israelis are Arabs; they are descendants of Palestinians on the territory of historic Palestine, part of which was incorporated into the newly established State of Israel in 1948. They have an Israeli passport, so they are Israeli citizens, and yet they are torn in their loyalties. Sometimes they are called Arab Israelis, sometimes Israeli Palestinians. This alone shows that your situation is particularly sensitive in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that has been simmering for decades.

How do you experience the current escalation of the conflict, which could turn into a regional conflagration? Do they support their state of Israel, which Hamas wants to wipe out – or do they feel more connected to the Palestinians, who are threatened with a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip?

Jabareen and his team of almost 25 employees mainly provide legal assistance to Arabs in Israel, supervising legal proceedings and litigating against discrimination. Israel is accused of repeatedly violating the rights of its Arab citizens. Jabareen complains that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in particular has rapidly increased discrimination against Arab Israelis. But Israel is a constitutional state – unlike many of its Arab neighbors – and human rights activists like Jabareen can go to court if they believe their rights have been violated.

“A dangerous time”

Jabareen speaks softly, almost reverently, as if carrying a great burden. “It’s a dangerous time,” says the lawyer, feeling that “something dark” is brewing. Since the October 7 Hamas massacre and subsequent Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, tensions between Jews and Arabs in the country have increased, he says. Since then, the situation for Arabs in Israel has become even more difficult.

Now that a hospital in Gaza has been hit by a rocket and the Palestinians blame Israel, Jabareen fears that Israeli society will completely ‘explode’.

Israel denies responsibility for the attack on the clinic. The Israeli army released drone images and intercepted telephone calls on Wednesday morning, showing that a misplaced rocket from Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian terror group in Gaza, caused the explosion. But Jabareen distrusts the Israeli army. “Israel is responsible for killing civilians in the hospital,” he said.

Violent riots were feared

Jabareen fears that Israeli Arabs are now increasingly becoming targets. “Right-wing extremists, backed by the Netanyahu government,” spread a lot of hate speech, especially online. “They say things like: ‘The Arabs are the fifth column,’ that they cannot be trusted or that it is time to deport them.” Organized groups on social media tag “suspects” and publish their phone numbers, addresses and sometimes even the names of their relatives, Jabareen says.

Others would be sued by their university or employer because of a Facebook post. For example, a client is in danger of being expelled from college after posting that Israel is barbaric for bombing the Gaza Strip. The state and society are taking “increasingly repressive” action against Israel’s Arab minority, Jabareen says, and almost any criticism of the government is currently being interpreted as support for Hamas.

Jabareen’s office window overlooks the port of Haifa. Flocks of birds move over a grain silo. The Mediterranean metropolis is considered one of the cities in Israel where Arabs and Jews largely live together peacefully. Jabareen sees this as an ideal for the entire country. But he believes that without justice there can be no peace.

“Crushed” between Hamas and Israel

“Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians on October 7 was brutal and unjustifiable,” Jabareen said. He rejects Hamas, as do, in his view, most of Israel’s approximately 1.2 million Arabs. But many here also felt the pain of Palestinians who have lived “56 years under Israeli occupation,” Jabareen said. And:

The suffering of the Palestinians cannot be bombed away, says Jabareen. Nor is the fact that Hamas will likely remain the representative of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – even after the massacre.

But hasn’t Hamas harmed the interests of the Palestinians? “Of course,” says Jabareen, “that’s the bad thing!” The Palestinians would be “crushed” between the violence of Hamas and that of the Israeli state. For example, what military use is there in cutting off the water supply to two million Palestinians, he asks? “Israel is out for revenge, but revenge is illegal.”

“We go from one war to another”

Kamil Mansur also looks gloomy to the future. “We are going from one war to another,” says the entrepreneur from Gisch. All life has disappeared from the Arab village in northern Israel, not far from the Lebanese border, says Mansur – shops, restaurants, everything is closed. People also left their homes, the 38-year-old said.

Mansur lives with his wife Tamam and his three children in Gish and, like most residents of the Aramean village, is a Christian. He has been unemployed since Hamas declared war on Israel. No one comes to his guest house just behind the house anymore and his travel agency “Jish Tours”, which offers flights to Europe and the Middle East, is closed.

Mansur says he is also slowly thinking about leaving the village. «Maybe to Germany or Canada. Somewhere where me and my family have a future.” It is not just the war that bothers him. “As an Arab in Israel you are a second-class citizen,” says Mansur.

“That would mean the end of the state of Israel”

He is disappointed with the Israeli government, but also with the Jewish part of society. “I feel Israeli, I speak Hebrew very well, I pay taxes, I have Jewish friends. But as soon as there is a conflict, I am an Arab. Like an enemy within.” He is forced to take a stand against Hamas or is treated as if he is not a real Israeli. The Netanyahu government adds fuel to the fire, says Mansur, by necessarily suspecting the Arabs of sympathizing with terrorists.

Most Israeli Arabs have rejected Hamas, Mansur also says. Gaza may be the largest prison in the world, but if Hamas were released it would mean the end of the State of Israel. As an Arab, Israel is not the nicest country, but as a Christian it is still the best option in the Middle East. He says:

There is a dull thud in the valley. “These are ours,” says Mansur, referring to the Israeli artillery, which has likely just fired a shell into Lebanon. The IDF (“Israeli Armed Forces”) and the Hezbollah militia have been engaged for days in a kind of “as you say to me, I do to you” battle on the northern border, in which both sides appear to be trying to avoid each other. escalation. Still. Mansur knows this could change at any moment.

“Too far? Not far enough»

Yoseph Haddad goes one step further. “Everything that is happening in Gaza now is Hamas’s fault.” The 37-year-old angrily rejects criticism of the Israeli air force that it goes too far and razes entire blocks of houses in Gaza. “Too far? Not far enough,” Haddad says on the phone.

The ‘terrorists’ are also responsible for the explosion on Tuesday evening at a Gaza hospital, Haddad says: Islamic Jihad because it fires rockets from residential areas, Hamas because it covers up war crimes and spreads lies.

Because of the terrorists, Israel has suffered beheadings, rapes and more than 1,400 murders – “this should not be turned into a conflict between Jews and Arabs. It is one between barbarians and the civilized world,” says Haddad.

The studied political scientist has made a name for himself in Israel with his sharp statements. He speaks at public events, is invited to appear on TV shows and has founded an NGO called ‘Together Vouch for Each Other’, which aims to build bridges between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Haddad is an exception in Israel; he discovered his heart for the Jewish state early on. At the age of 18, he volunteered – Arabs are not required to do so – to serve in the Israeli army. In 2006, he was sent to the Lebanon War, where a grenade blew off his foot. But ‘great Jewish and Arab doctors’ have screwed him back to his fate. When Haddad talks – and he talks a lot – it sounds like there are no problems between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

“If you see this man, please let us know in The Hague.”

But Haddad’s pro-Zionist views do not please everyone. Many Arabs in Israel view him critically. He knows that too. In August, he and his family were even attacked at Dubai airport by “members of my community,” i.e. Arab Israelis. Haddad has also made enemies in Europe: during a speech by Haddad at University College London, a defamatory poster called for protests against the event, because as an Israeli soldier Haddad helped Israel invade Lebanon in 2006. “If you see this man, please let us know in The Hague.” What was meant was the International Court of Human Rights in The Hague.

However, the hostility he receives from the Arab community comes from a minority, albeit a loud one. The majority are happy to live in Israel, even if they dare not say so openly. Many people shy away from it, Haddad says, because it is interpreted as a lack of sympathy for the Palestinians.

“But that is changing,” says Haddad. When more than a thousand Hamas fighters invaded the kibbutzim and raged for hours without resistance, it was immediately clear to Israeli Arabs what it meant to live under Hamas’s reign of terror. “Hamas is not only the enemy of the Jews, but also of the Arabs,” Haddad is certain.