In the run-down suburbs of Lod, planted in the plains of central Israel, few passers-by want to talk. One of the traces, no doubt, of the traumas of May 2021: the city, where Jews and Arabs then lived side by side, without really mixing, exploded overnight. Two residents were killed during the riots between the two communities. The scenes of lynching, vandalization of places of worship and ransacking of shops quickly spread to other so-called “mixed” cities. of Israel. Then at war against Gaza, the Jewish state saw another front open up, within its borders, between its citizens.
A year later, in Lod, “the atmosphere is rotten”, summarizes a trader. In the Ramat Eshkol district, the epicenter of last year’s violence, he waits for the barge with two friends. None want to give their name. They are part of the 20% of Palestinian citizens of Israel, descendants of those who remained during the Nakba (“catastrophe”), the forced exodus of 700,000 Palestinians at the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. “It’s simple, we live under occupation. We are victims of racism, all the time, finally lets go of one of them, a round-faced forty-something. I am Arab, Palestinian, Israeli. They want us to forget who we are, since 1948, but we don’t forget. We live in this country, so we will resist here. »
nauseating atmosphere
The three men accuse the mayor of Lod, Yair Revivo, a member of Likud, the right-wing formation of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, of fueling this nauseating atmosphere. The city councilor is known for his policies of exclusion with regard to his Palestinian citizens, who represent a third of the 80,000 inhabitants. Last year, in the face of violence, he asked for the reinforcement of border guards, normally posted in the occupied West Bank. He also called for the rescue of groups of Jewish volunteers, mostly from the settler movement, who patrolled the streets armed.
“Anyone could have predicted what happened in May, notes Israeli researcher Haim Yacobi, architect, professor at University College London. The Palestinians of Lod are doubly excluded: as Arab inhabitants of the city and as Palestinian citizens of Israel. It is the result of policies that have their roots in Israel’s colonial character. » When the academic began his research on the city, in 2000, during the second Intifada, no one or almost no protest. Palestinian residents want to show that they are citizens of Israel, trying to achieve change from within.
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