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Hirsh Goodman: Gosh! We Have a Problem

The Orr Commission of inquiry into the events that surrounded the killing of 13 Israeli Arab citizens during demonstrations in October 2000 took almost three years to present its report. Among the conclusions: then- prime minister Ehud Barak and his foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami -- who doubled as minister for internal security -- are castigated for not having read the writing on the wall, being out of touch with the police, disregarding critical evidence and being insensitive to developing realities in the wake of then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon�s Temple Mount visit, which sparked off both the new intifada and outbreaks of violence among Israel's Arab community. The police are found to have failed to tell the truth to the government, as well as to have used live fire and rubber bullets without due authorization, used undue force and having a culture of hatred for Israeli Arabs whom they treat like "the enemy." Israeli Arab politicians involved are criticized for incitement, encouraging disorder and questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish state. There were no personal conclusions against Barak; Ben Ami was barred from ever being internal security minister again; a few of the senior police personnel were either ordered to be fired, held back in rank or rapped over the knuckles. And it was noted that there exist deep problems between Israel and its Arab minority of 1 million people.

In short, a report really worth waiting three years for: No one to be tried for the unprecedented killing of 13 unarmed Israeli citizens, no charges recommended against police who lied to government, no manslaughter charges against policemen whose fingers were too fast on the trigger and who used their weapons against "an enemy" -- not fellow citizens, albeit citizens violently demonstrating.

There was no need to wait for Supreme Court Justice Theodor Orr and his colleagues to know that there was a problem between the state and its Arab citizens. It is no secret that this problem has, by the force of circumstance, been exacerbated by the last three years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One just has to listen to the often hair-raising demagoguery from Israeli Arab members of the Knesset; to remember that one of them, Dr. Ahmed Tibi, is a close aide and adviser to Yasser Arafat; to note that key members of the Islamic clergy are being held on suspicion of supporting Hamas in the occupied territories, and that a growing number of Israeli Arabs are becoming involved in aiding and abetting acts of terror against targets in Israel, to understand that the bomb is ticking and that the Orr Commission has done nothing significant to defuse it or even delay its explosion. As the commission noted, "the writing was on the wall." It still is, and clearer than ever.

In the early 50s, the then-heads of the Shin Bet security service counseled prime minister David Ben-Gurion to include as many Israeli Arabs as possible in the civil service, including the diplomatic corps. They said Israel should open the universities to them, bring good services to their towns and villages and solve the serious problems created by the 1948 war such as the phenomenon of "present absentees." Those are the Arabs who had fled the fighting by leaving their homes in Jaffa or other Arab towns for the relative safety of being with family in the Galilee or other areas that ended up as part of Israel and who, for years, had been prevented from returning to their original homes which, by then, had largely been used to house incoming Jewish immigrants and Israeli government and public institutions. These people were refugees in their own land. In the early 50s there were several tens of thousands of them. Now there are over 300,000, a figure indicative of how every aspect of the problem in relations between Jew and Arab in Israel has been amplified over the years.

Instead of integrating members of the Arab community into the civil service, they were blatantly kept out. Getting into universities was not made easy for them. One can, to this day, count the number of Arab professors at Israeli universities on two hands. Even the Christian Arabs who had left their homes in the villages of Ikrit and Birim during the 1948 war and who were promised by almost every Israeli prime minister -- including Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and Benjamin Netanyahu -- that they would be allowed to return home, still live in "temporary quarters" in the town of Jish.

Given that three years have elapsed since the events of October 2000, the Orr Commission not only told us nothing we did not know before, but worse, it is way behind the curve and it has contributed nothing to solving the real problems. There may be some reform within the police structure and perhaps during training policemen will be taught to be more tolerant. The police may perhaps tighten procedures for the use of live ammunition and Ehud Barak, given the harsh language used against him, might find it more difficult to run for prime minister again, as he was planning.

But all that will not heal the deepening wounds that are making it impossible for the Jewish and Arab communities to begin to understand they have a common future together. If the police are not weaned from the culture of considering Arabs the enemy; if Muslim fundamentalism continues making inroads into the Israeli Arab community; if the number of Israeli Arabs involved in terror rises; and if the Shin Bet's advice from 50 years ago continues to be ignored, all the Orr Commissions in the world will not be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again.