Many Palestinian residents of Israel dwell in worry amid a backlash after Hamas’ assault

This story is part of an NPR sequence reflecting on a yr of conflict and the way it has modified life throughout Israel, the Gaza Strip, the area and the world since Oct. 7, 2023.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Strolling via central Jaffa, a blended Arab and Jewish district in southern Tel Aviv, there are outlets with each Arabic and Hebrew indicators, and many ladies put on hijabs.

Abu Yehya modifications a bicycle wheel in his store. He’s a Palestinian citizen of Israel — a neighborhood of about 2 million folks that makes up one-fifth of the nation’s complete inhabitants.

Abu Yehya says he’s at all times had a mixture of Arab and Jewish clients and pals.

However since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, he says his Jewish neighbors view him with suspicion.

“The way they look at you is different now,” Abu Yehya says. “They walk in [to the shop], see you’re an Arab and walk out.”

Many Palestinian residents of Israel dwell and work alongside Jewish Israelis, and converse each Arabic and Hebrew. Twenty of them had been among the many 1,200 folks killed in final yr’s Hamas assault, based on Israeli officers.

However many Palestinian residents of Israel say they really feel weak residing in an environment of worry, going through a backlash from Israeli society and authorities after the Hamas assault simply over a yr in the past.

Many in the neighborhood have kinfolk within the Gaza Strip, the place the Israeli army’s marketing campaign in response to the Hamas assault has killed greater than 43,000 folks and injured greater than 100,000 others, based on Gaza’s Well being Ministry.

Abu Yehya says he has misplaced kinfolk within the conflict in Gaza.

However whereas households of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas arrange Hostage Sq. in central Tel Aviv — with tents, artwork installations and memorials — Abu Yehya says he hasn’t held any memorials for his killed kinfolk for worry that his Jewish neighbors would mistake his grief for assist for Palestinian militants in Gaza. Palestinians in Jaffa say they attempt to keep away from talking about Gaza or their kinfolk there in public, he says, for worry of police reprisal.

“I don’t even dare to write the words ‘rest in peace’ on Facebook to mourn my cousin,” Abu Yehya says.

He says a Jewish man who was good friend turned on him after the Hamas assault. “He told me, it would be better if we [Jewish Israelis] lived here without you [Palestinians],” Abu Yehya says. “I had respect and love for this man, but I can’t forget the way he looked at me that day. Full of racism.”

Who’re Palestinian residents of Israel?

Through the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, greater than 750,000 Palestinians fled or had been expelled from their properties. A few of them took shelter in refugee camps within the Gaza Strip and elsewhere, which through the years become cities the place generations of Palestinians with roots in locations like Jaffa dwell.

The 1000’s of Palestinians who stayed in Israel had been positioned underneath army rule till 1967, with restricted freedom to maneuver within the nation and the world. Israel additionally drafted legal guidelines to strip many Palestinians of their land and switch it to state possession.

In 2018, the Israeli parliament handed a regulation referred to as the “Jewish nation-state,” which says that the precise to train nationwide self-determination in Israel is exclusive to the Jewish folks. A authorized rights group, Adalah, has documented over 65 Israeli legal guidelines that it says discriminate in opposition to Palestinian residents of Israel or Palestinians who dwell within the Israeli-occupied territories on the idea of being Palestinian.

Right this moment, many Palestinian residents of Israel are distinguished members of society, together with students, docs, legal professionals and lawmakers within the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

Mohammad Darawshe, an knowledgeable on Arab-Jewish relations on the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute, says Palestinian residents of Israel dwell in a hybrid world. They’re considered as traitors by some within the Arab world — together with some fellow Palestinians — for not abandoning their Israeli citizenship in protest, he explains.

“[Non-Israeli citizen] Palestinians started seeing the Arab citizens as Israelis, mainly people that have gone through the Israelization process, and for Israel they are leftovers of the enemy,” Darawshe instructed NPR.

Darawshe says he believes many Palestinian residents of Israel don’t need to dwell in a Palestinian state, and that the way forward for such a attainable state isn’t encouraging.

However he says he believes many desire residing in Israel over different Arab international locations or an unsure future Palestinian state. “In Israel we are experiencing limited democracy, and also limited prosperity. Both of them are better than what you have in most Arab countries,” Darawshe says.

But these restricted rights have grow to be extra restricted after final yr’s Oct. 7 assault, based on rights teams.

A crackdown on free speech

Ahmad Khalefa waves from his entrance door. It’s previous 5 p.m. and it’s unlawful for him to go any farther. The 42-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel has been underneath home arrest for nearly 10 months, two of these underneath night time home arrest.

On Oct. 19 final yr, Khalefa, a human rights lawyer, was arrested throughout an anti-war demonstration in Umm al-Fahm, his hometown in northern Israel made up of Palestinian residents.

He says he was chanting slogans in assist of Palestinian victims of the conflict, together with one utilized in Palestinian demonstrations for over 30 years. The mantra was: “Gaza, don’t sway, you are full of dignity and glory.”

Out of the blue, Israeli police stormed the protest, which Khalefa says was loud however nonviolent till then. Movies filmed by witnesses and posted to social media confirmed police arresting folks, throwing stun grenades and capturing rubber bullets.

Khalefa says, as a neighborhood chief, the police got here for him. “Where is Khalefa? Where is Khalefa? They were looking for me,” he says. He instantly surrendered to the police, he says, extending his arms in entrance of him to point out he was unarmed.

What occurred subsequent took him abruptly.

“They took me from my shirt, ripped my shirt above me, and started beating me,” Khalefa says. “They put me on the ground, two or three officers, and started beating my ribs with their knees.”

Khalefa says the police searched his house that night time, threatening his spouse and going via his kids’s backpacks and rooms.

Khalefa was charged with “incitement to terrorism” and “identification with a terrorist organization” primarily based on that chant and different anti-war slogans. He spent 4 months in jail, the place he says he was mistreated: overwhelmed, given little to eat and compelled to put on the identical police-issued shirt for 3 months. He says the cells had been overcrowded and filthy, and that he additionally witnessed the abuse of different prisoners.

“For me, it was much, much harder than when they beat me up, to hear people crying 24/7,” he says. “People were begging for their lives and crying. … The atmosphere was full of fear that you can die in any second.”

The Israeli police instructed NPR that it was not aware of “the claims described” and that each prisoner has a proper to file a criticism.

In February, the Israeli Supreme Court docket dominated that Khalefa was not a hazard to Israeli society and put him underneath home arrest in an house he rented in Haifa for about six months. He wore an ankle bracelet, and his spouse stayed with him assigned as his guarantor. Their kids had been nonetheless in Umm al-Fahm attending faculty, staying with kinfolk, and Khalefa solely noticed them on weekends. He was then launched to his house in Umm al-Fahm underneath night time arrest, the place he awaits sentencing subsequent yr.

Khalefa says the entire state of affairs confirmed what he knew all alongside about residing as a Palestinian citizen of Israel.

“We are living in a political body that claims to be [democratic] state, but it is a Jewish democracy that we have no place [in],” he says.

Palestinian college students and teachers have additionally come underneath the crackdown on freedom of speech in Israeli universities, based on the authorized rights group Adalah. The group says many college students have been suspended, expelled or confronted disciplinary motion for inciting violence in opposition to the state of Israel by collaborating in road protests or posting social media messages in opposition to the conflict.

The Israeli Training Ministry hasn’t responded to NPR’s request for remark.

Court docket attitudes change

Myssana Morany, a lawyer with Adalah who represents Khalefa, says there is a harshness of the fees and sentencing makes it troublesome to defend purchasers in free expression circumstances. She says modifications within the judicial system after final yr’s assault on Israel have left the courts the place she works unrecognizable.

“Suddenly I felt like I don’t have a common language with the court anymore. I’m standing there, arguing the same things I argued before that led to the release of a lot of people [and] I’m getting to a dead end, with the court, with the judges, with the attorney general,” Morany says.

She says even the judges are harsher when she’s arguing a case.

“They just look at me and say … ‘What was before the 7th of October, isn’t what is happening after the 7th of October,’ ” she says.

Israel’s Justice Ministry has not responded to an NPR request for remark.

Nonactivists are additionally focused

One Palestinian girl instructed NPR that her Jewish Israeli landlord reported her to the police for a social media submit he thought meant she was praising Hamas. She mentioned he was misinterpreting an Arabic phrase.

She requested NPR to not use her title as a result of she mentioned she feared for her safety.

The one mom spent 11 months in jail on incitement of terrorism and fees of supporting Hamas.

In a separate incident in Might, video of the arrest of Rasha Harami, a Palestinian beautician from Majd al-Krum, in northern Israel, circulated on-line after police filmed her being handcuffed and blindfolded, whimpering because the officers introduced her fees.

The Israeli police mentioned she was arrested for posting social media messages in opposition to the Israeli army. One submit in contrast Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler for the conflict in Gaza.

Harami was launched inside 24 hours and positioned underneath home arrest for 5 days.

There have been 84 indictments for incitement to terrorism filed between 2018 and 2022, primarily in opposition to Arabs, based on the parliamentary Analysis and Data Heart. Amnesty Worldwide says that because the conflict started final yr, the Israeli state has filed a whole lot of indictments in opposition to Palestinians for expression-related offenses underneath the Counter-Terrorism Legislation, principally involving social media posts.

Within the wake of the Hamas assault final October, Israel’s police commissioner, Kobi Shabtai, made his place clear: “Whoever wants to be a citizen of Israel, welcome,” he mentioned, utilizing the Arabic phrase for welcome. “Whoever wants to identify with Gaza is welcome, I will put them on a bus headed there.” (No Palestinian citizen of Israel is thought to have been bused to Gaza underneath such circumstances; though, Israel did deport 1000’s of allow staff from Gaza again to the enclave after the conflict broke out.)

Sami Abu Shehadeh, a distinguished Palestinian citizen of Israel from Jaffa, who served within the Israeli parliament, says he has skilled violence in his hometown, Jaffa.

He says he was attacked bodily and verbally on the streets by Jewish Israelis, and that ladies who’re visibly Muslim and Arab have acquired harsh abuse.

“Here in Jaffa, a lot of the Muslim women who wear scarves were attacked on the public transportation,” Abu Shehadeh instructed NPR. “Part of them are afraid of going to hospitals or see their doctor because they are attacked on the streets because they are not Jewish.”

Abu Shehadeh says he knew a person who labored at a grocery store who was fired by way of WhatsApp textual content message.

“Don’t come to work tomorrow, we have stopped hiring terrorists,” he says the textual content message learn.

The employee wouldn’t converse to NPR or establish the grocery store for worry of reprisal.

This remedy has been complicated to some. Many Palestinian residents of Israel are members of the neighborhood, together with medical personnel who helped deal with individuals who had been injured in final yr’s Hamas assault. “On the same day, they were rescued by Arab Palestinians,” Abu Shehadeh says.

Some Jewish Israelis say they perceive the considerations of Palestinians in his metropolis.

“Most Arabs are afraid of being arrested and harmed. They don’t express themselves freely,” says Yona Rosenbaum, a resident within the blended metropolis of Haifa.

A yr of persistence

Within the Jabalieh Mosque in Jaffa, Imam Bilal Dekkeh leads about 10 males in afternoon prayers.

Palestinian Muslims come to seek out religious steering from Dekkeh at a time of anguish.

However even the preacher says he’s avoiding any reference to the conflict.

“Any Friday sermon about Gaza, and the police will arrest you,” he instructed NPR.

Dekkeh says many in his congregation come to ease their ache over the conflict in personal, and that he solely has one factor to say: “I tell them to be patient,” Dekkeh says, “that there is a mighty God above.”

Crime stoking worry

A lethal capturing this month within the coronary heart of Jaffa uncovered these tensions.

On the similar second that sirens wailed throughout an Iranian missile assault on Israel, on Oct. 1, two Palestinian males from the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution opened fireplace at a Jaffa gentle rail station, killing seven folks. Hamas claimed duty for the capturing.

Bystander Shay Peretz witnessed the capturing and referred to as for police to go looking each Palestinian house in Jaffa.

“The Arabs of Jaffa are a danger,” he instructed reporters. “Anyone who harms us will be dealt with an iron fist.”

After the assault, information reviews mentioned one of many suspected gunmen bumped into a close-by mosque.

Israel’s far-right nationwide safety minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, mentioned, “If a connection is found to the mosque, we need to close it, to demolish it.”

There was no connection, Israeli police later mentioned.

Palestinian residents of Israel felt like they had been caught within the center, though Arabs had been amongst these wounded within the Jaffa capturing.

Eran Nissan, a Jewish medic who handled the wounded, instructed Israeli TV that the Ben-Gvir was exploiting hatred in Israeli society.

“Jews and Arabs are trying to build a life together,” Nissan mentioned.

It is a life that Palestinian residents of Israel battle to navigate because the conflict in Gaza continues.

Abed Abou Shhade and Yanal Jabarin contributed reporting from Jaffa, Tel Aviv. Itay Stern contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel.