In the capital of the “Arab Triangle”, Umm al-Fahm – “mother of coal” in Arabic – the alleys overlook the Wadi Ara valley, which stands at the edge of the West Bank. Up there, in the middle of this horde of whitish houses, stands the art gallery of Saïd Abu Shakra. The man, an Israeli Arab, founder of the Umm al-Fahm Gallery, presents the ceramic workshop for women in the city to a group of school principals from Tel Aviv. Outside, the scent of smoke mingles with the smell of hookah typical of Arab villages. But in Israel.
Umm al-Fahm rarely gets a good press. It embodies the heavy toll of the endemic violence currently raging in the country’s Arab communities.
Since the start of 2021, 104 people have lost their lives in the violence. Eighty-nine of them were men and, in more than half of the cases, people under the age of 30. The stake is made daily. Every few days, a new person is injured or murdered.
“They are nothing”
Mr. Abu Shakra, 65, has spent his entire life in Umm al-Fahm. The man, a former commander in the Israeli police, deplores that he can no longer “feel safe at home”.
Between 2017 and 2020, Arab residents of Israel, who represent 21% of the country’s total population, accounted for 84% of those injured or killed by firearms, according to a report by the Research and Information Center of the Knesset. According to the same report, a person is 30 times more likely to be a victim of a crime in Arab towns than in Jewish towns.
A major problem emerges: illegal weapons. “Here, people don’t have a permit, but they can have access to weapons. If I have a problem with you, if you don’t pay me, I have the solution, ”explains the ex-policeman, mimicking the gesture of loading a firearm.
The phenomenon, according to Arab Israeli researcher Ilham Shahbari, who is interested in relations between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority in Israel, is also attributable to endemic unemployment among the country’s Arab youth. “Between 30 and 40% of young Arab citizens do not go to university, do not have a job. They are nothing. For some, crime is a source of life. They can get a salary, however small, for shooting people. This desperate young generation is facing a socio-economic wall. “
The shootings therefore go beyond organized crime. Ilham Shahbari remembers it too well. In 2015, she was in her village, Daburiyya, some thirty kilometers from Umm al-Fahm. “From my balcony, I saw my neighbor being shot in the street,” says the young woman. A simple financial dispute was at the origin of the conflict.
“You could just be in your car, go to the supermarket, and, by mistake, be killed. Everyone knows someone, a friend, a family member who has been killed. Arab society is going through a huge trauma. All they want is to put an end to this nightmare and regain their personal safety, ”emphasizes the researcher.
According to her, although a small proportion of Arab citizens use weapons, this minority nevertheless has a great influence on the atmosphere in the communities.
Years of neglect to catch up
The scourge is not new, however. “It started after the events of October 2000,” explains Ilham Shahbari. At the time, following the assassination of Arab demonstrators by Israeli police at the start of the second intifada, the police had all but withdrawn from Arab areas. “But the more the state neglected the phenomenon, the more it grew,” she continues.
Over time, the problem has been fueled as much by the historical mistrust of the Arabs towards the police as by the laxity of the latter. The figures are without equivocal. According to a report by the Israeli daily Haaretz, police solved only 23 percent of Arab Israeli murders this year, compared to 71 percent among the Jewish population.
Moreover, Mr. Abu Shakra remembers the assassination of a man near the gallery a few years ago. “The police never came! »He indignantly. He has never been asked for the images from the gallery’s surveillance camera. A few days ago, the scenario repeated itself. “So it’s very easy to get out of it,” Abu Shakra believes. Until recently, reluctant to interfere in this issue of endemic violence, the Israeli state feels, mainly since last May, caught up.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said earlier this week that he was “losing the country”. While his Minister of Public Security, Omer Barlev, has promised to make “this war” his “top priority”.
“When the young Arabs of Israel took up arms in May, it was a wake-up call for the state. He realized that these illegal weapons could also kill Jewish citizens, be used for terrorist actions, not only against Arab citizens, explains the researcher. Today, it is a top priority for the government. “
Hope and the future
Saïd Abu Shakra does not want to be “the victim in Israel, the weak man, the stranger”. On the contrary. “I want to be in the center of Israel. I have to see people together, in this multicultural place, that people, Jews and Arabs, come here to feel close to each other. “For him, the gallery is a way of working with“ hope and the future ”.
The director’s goal is to reach out to all segments of the population by organizing exhibitions in the houses of Umm al-Fahm, so that citizens from all over the country observe the works while reaching out to the locals. It organizes exhibitions of Jewish and Arab artists, seminars, educational workshops as well as movie nights aimed at bringing together all layers of society at the gallery. All free for residents of the city.
Mr. Abu Shakra sees himself as an instigator of “dialogue”. His gallery aims to create bridges, to transform society. The task is often complex, but the man says he wishes to remain hopeful. “We, the community, the municipality, the teachers, the schools, in particular, must take responsibility,” he admits. We have to take charge of these young people, solve their problems. They come from our community. They have their challenges, their youth, sometimes difficult families. We can approach them, touch them and hug them. Ultimately, they do not come from elsewhere. They are our sons. “