Mourners flocked to comfort the family of Yaqoub al-Qian in southern Israel this week, following his death last Wednesday when Israeli police fatally shot him. The anger dominating these condolence calls could translate into something far more threatening.
To Mr al-Qian’s family, the broader Israeli Arab community, and its leaders, he is a victim of Israeli aggression. Many thousands who did not pay a condolence call still commemorated him, through a day-long strike which all Israeli Arabs were called to observe.
As far as Israel’s police and political establishment is concerned, when Mr al-Qian died during clashes between residents of his Bedouin village and security forces, he was unleashing a terror attack which killed police officer Erez Levi and could have killed others were he not shot.
The sides are backing conflicting versions of events, trusting either Israel’s police, which says Mr al-Qian first started a ramming attack by speeding his car towards officers who responded with fire, or those claiming the fire from officers came first. And whatever evidence surfaces, most Israelis will stick with their gut feeling about what happened.
The question is just how much the anger in the Arab sector will impact things on the ground in Israel. And given the sheer number of layers to the Arab fury, the answer may be depressing.
Many Arabs say a raw nerve has been touched because a man was killed, not a young hothead and not a Palestinian fighting a cause in the West Bank, but a blameless middle-aged teacher, close to his home in sovereign Israel. What is more, Arab politician Ayman Odeh was there, protesting the demolition that was taking place. He was injured during clashes, sending pictures of him with blood stains whizzing around social media.
This demolition feeds into the anger. While the Israeli government regards demolitions — as took place on the morning of the fatal clash at Umm al-Hiran, Mr al-Qian’s village — as acceptable measures against wildcat Bedouin building, many Arabs see them as proof that the establishment is aimed at dispossessing them.
Among Israeli Arabs, the saga of the Bedouins is often seen as the most emotive, and presented by hard-liners as a cautionary tale.
They say Israeli authorities asked or told many Bedouins to relocate in the early years of the state and went on to give them the nod to settle on new lands, albeit often without paperwork — sometimes only to evict when land is wanted for Jewish development.
The residents of Umm al-Hiran claim that this is their story, and indeed a mainly-Jewish neighbourhood is planned for where they are living (though they omit to mention they have been offered a chance to become residents of the new neighbourhood).
Ideologues in the wider Arab community say this proves the folly of Bedouins in complying with the state, and proves the error of some Bedouins in putting confidence in the state and serving in the army.
The Umm al-Hiran saga comes as tensions between Israelis and the Palestinians are high, and as Arab politicians are claiming investigations against Basel Ghattas of their Joint List party represent an attempt to delegitimise them. Mr Ghattas is being probed for smuggling mobile phones to prisoners and money laundering.
Israeli Arabs represent a community caught between the pull of greater integration into Jewish Israel and, on the other hand, solidarity with their community and with Palestinians.
The hard-liners sometimes struggle to galvanise them, often resorting to the fabricated claims that Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque is “in danger” at Israel’s hands to rile people up.
It was amid this kind of incitement that an Israeli Arab man from the north of the country murdered two Jews in a Tel Aviv pub attack a year ago.
Now extremists among Israel’s Arab citizens have a development which can advance their cause. Told their way, it can much more effectively encapsulate so many of their arguments, and be used to ramp up the tensions from Israeli Arabs towards Israeli Jews and the establishment.
