Lydd, Israel – A week after Israel began bombing Gaza last October, Ghassan Mounayer received a call from the Israeli police.
An officer warned him not to write critical Facebook posts about the war or call for demonstrations in Lydd. [Lod in Hebrew]where Palestinian citizens of Israel like Mounayer live alongside Israeli Jews.
“They said, 'We're watching your Facebook,' and to not write anything 'satanic,'” said Mounayer, a human rights activist. “I said, 'Do you have any examples of posts like this?' He said, 'Don't be smart. “You're being watched.”
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack on October 7, tensions in mixed Palestinian and Israeli cities have reached boiling point. But few places are as tense as Lydd, a city governed by far-right mayor Yair Revivo and where relations between Palestinians and Israeli Jews have been strained for years.
Palestinian activists say they fear for their lives as they live in the shadow of Israeli authorities and heavily armed Jewish Israeli citizens, many of whom belong to supremacist movements. They warn that the city could “explode” into conflict and lead to the persecution and even expulsion of Palestinian residents.
“The Palestinians know that the Israelis are looking for any situation to kill us or arrest us, because right now we are in wartime,” Mounayer told Al Jazeera.
“Israel is only a democracy for Israeli Jews and many Israeli Jews want us to leave Lydd and go to the Arab villages.”
'Living under constant threat'
Palestinians in Lydd make up about 27 percent of the city's population, many of whom live in urban, impoverished neighborhoods and whose families have lived in Lydd for generations, before the Nakba, or catastrophe, when 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their homes and villages. during the creation of Israel.
Some are children and grandchildren of Palestinians who fled the village of Majdal, which is approximately 62 kilometers (38 miles) from Lydd, during the Nakba. Others from Majdal – now called Ashkelon in Israel – went to Gaza. Entire Palestinian families today remain divided between Lydd and Gaza.
Maha al-Nakeeb, a Palestinian human rights lawyer in Lydd, has lost 16 of her relatives in Israel's relentless bombing campaign in Gaza. Despite her trauma, she has refrained from commenting on or criticizing the war on social media for fear of being arrested.
In the first two weeks after October 7, at least 100 Palestinian citizens of Israel were arrested for social media posts expressing sympathy or anger over Israel's war in Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 people to date. the vast majority of whom are children and women. Thousands more are lost under the rubble of war, presumed dead.
“Palestinians live under constant threat… all Arabs here live in fear,” al-Nakeeb told Al Jazeera. “The Israelis want us to think that we live in their house. That this city – this place – does not belong to us.”
Mounayer added that Israel has historically sought to punish or crush expressions of solidarity between Palestinians living in Israel and those living in the occupied territories. She added that Palestinians in Lydd are suppressing their anger at all the reports of Israeli atrocities coming out of Gaza.
“Israel does not want us to feel solidarity with our brothers and sisters. They don’t want us to ask for collective rights,” she stated.
'We are not treated like citizens'
Israeli extremists have long seen Lydd – and other mixed cities – as a battlefield where they fight to increase their numbers and gradually erase Palestinian existence.
This is the explicit mission of Garin Torani, or Bible Seeds, an Israeli supremacist group that intentionally sets up shop in Palestinian neighborhoods across Israel. Since most Palestinians cannot obtain building permits, members of this group and other far-right Israelis exploit this discriminatory policy to build new housing in densely populated Palestinian districts.
When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, many settlers moved to Lydd and other mixed towns. Illegal settlers from the occupied West Bank have also strategically moved to Lydd to “Judaize” the city, often resulting in acute gentrification and rising tensions with Palestinians.
But whenever a dispute breaks out, security forces and Mayor Revivo protect only Israeli Jews, according to Nisrine Shehada, a Palestinian activist in Lydd.
“We are citizens of this state, but we are never treated as citizens,” he told Al Jazeera from his office.
Shehada recalled Lydd's solidarity protests with Palestinians who were being expelled from Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem and attacked at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in May 2021.
Back in Lydd, far-right Jewish Israelis responded to the protests by attacking and shooting a group of Palestinians on May 10. They killed Musa Hassuna, 32, a Palestinian resident of the city.
After the incident, protests increased as did ethnic violence between Israelis and Palestinians. An Israeli Jew, Yigal Yehoshua, was murdered by a Palestinian mob a week later.
According to Human Rights Watch, Israeli authorities handled the murders of Hassuna and Yehoshua very differently. All of the Israeli Jewish suspects were released on bail just two days after Hassuna's murder and were later acquitted of all charges. However, eight Palestinian men were quickly arrested in connection with Yehoshua's murder and charged with “murder” and “terrorism.”
The police also failed to protect Palestinians from violence by far-right Israeli Jewish groups and arrested 120 Palestinians in Lydd, compared to only 34 Israeli Jews.
“The protests were understandable and expected, but the government made all Palestinians pay a price for it,” al-Nakeeb said.
'We know they want to kick us out'
Palestinian residents of Lydd told Al Jazeera that they do not want any confrontation with far-right Israeli Jews in the city, despite Israel's continued atrocities in Gaza. Many fear that Palestinian communities could be shot dead or driven out of the city entirely if tensions rise.
Since October 7, Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has delivered thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to Israeli Jews across the country and illegal settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories. Many people walk openly carrying these weapons in Lydd.
“Here Israel distributed weapons like they were candy,” al-Nakeeb told Al Jazeera.
The tense political climate, coupled with the arming of civilians, has forced moderate leaders of the Israeli and Palestinian Jewish communities to form a committee. Its mission is to alleviate community tensions and avoid conflicts.
Shehada is part of this committee, which frequently attempts to dispel fake news in the hope of maintaining a cautious calm in Lydd. Despite cooperating with Israeli Jewish colleagues, she explained that she does not have any close Israeli Jewish friends.
“I never heard anyone on the committee say that we should all live together in peace and love. “Everyone is really scared and we need calm in our respective neighborhoods,” he told Al Jazeera.
But with Islam's fasting month of Ramadan approaching next week, the committee's efforts could be in vain. Most years, during the holy month, Israeli authorities tend to crack down on Palestinian worshipers who go to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Violence at the mosque could spark a deadly new conflict in Lydd.
“If we see problems in Al-Aqsa, it will cause a war,” Shehada said. “We all know what could happen. “We know [Israeli extremists] “I want to kick out the Palestinians.”
