Over 28 injured in riots in northern Israeli-Arab village (Roundup)

Oct 30, 2007, 12:10 GMT

Tel Aviv - At least 28 people were injured Tuesday in clashes between hundreds of Druze Arabs and Israeli police in a northern Israeli village, first aid officials said, underlying the fragile relationship between Israel's Arab minority and its law enforcement.

The clashes broke out after more than 100 Israeli police officers entered the village of Pki'in/Buqei'a before dawn to arrest a number of villagers who had damaged and taken down a cellular phone antenna adjacent to the village.

The villagers say they took down the antenna in protest, after it was set up without their consent and because they suspect it is behind the high incidence of cancer in the village.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said hundreds of villagers gathered at the entrance to the village and tried to block the police force from entering, throwing stones, concrete blocks and iron bars.

He said 16 police officers were injured, one of them seriously, five moderately and the rest lightly.

Some 12 villagers were also injured, one of them seriously after police fired live ammunition at him.

Rosenfeld admitted some of the officers fired live ammunition because they felt their lives were in danger when they were attacked by masked youths who also threw stun grenades in addition to the stones.

The police arrested six rioters, but later released them as part of a dialogue between high-ranking officers and village leaders aimed at calming the situation. A policewoman held up in the village was also rescued.

Faris Atish, an Arab ambulance worker from the nearby coastal town of Acre, said the crowd also wounded two medics when they attacked his ambulance with stones, crushed its windshield, and tried to break into it and pull out a wounded officer.

'I've never seen such a barrage of stones in my life,' he told Israel Radio, adding he 'really' felt his life was in danger.

But the villagers expressed outrage over the use of live ammunition, which some said rekindled memories of the large-scale unrest in Arab villages throughout northern Israel in October 2000.

Israeli police then shot dead 13 Arab-Israeli youths during violent clashes which broke out in solidarity with the second Palestinian Intifada (uprising).

The riots and the police handling of them caused an outcry at the time and shook relations between Israel's Jewish majority and Arab minority. An Israeli commission of inquiry criticized the use of live ammunition in the clashes, but no charges were brought before the officers, who also said their lives had been in danger. Since then, such violent clashes have been rare.

'There is a lot of anger, a lot of fury ... at the entry of the officers and the use of live ammunition,' the village leader, Sheikh Muafak Tarif, told Israel Radio, adding the entry of police into a Druze village 'in the middle of the night' Tuesday was a 'mistake.'

Villagers also accused police of entering a local house of prayer.

Buqei'a, in Arabic, or Pki'in, in Hebrew, located in the Upper Galilee near the border with Lebanon, is a predominantly Druze-Arab village which also has an ancient Jewish core.

It is normally known for its good Jewish-Arab relations.