‘They just see you as an Arab’: Israel’s Palestinian citizens given cursory protection from attack

When an Iranian missile bound for the industrial port of Haifa dropped out of the sky on the town of Tamra on Saturday night, it fell on Israel’s most vulnerable, and in one devastating flash, lit up the country’s deepest divide.

The missile demolished a three-storey stone house and killed four members of the same family: Manar Khatib, and her two daughters – Shada, a university student, and Hala, a 13-year-old schoolgirl – as well as Manar’s sister-in-law, Manal.

It was a solid house built in an old Arab style and it had two “safe rooms’”, one on each floor. When they heard the air raid sirens Manar and her daughters ran to the one on the second floor as they had practised, but the reinforced concrete did not protect them. They were blown apart and the floor under them fell on the safe room directly below, crushing Manal.

The blast blew the core out of the building, and sent the neighbours flying. About 40 people were injured, though none of the wounds were life-threatening.

“The explosion was so loud I can still hear it,” said Azmeh Kiwan, a 50-year-old homeowner who lived directly opposite.

When he opened his eyes, the whole district was in total darkness. It was only when the town’s rescue workers came with their bright lights that the neighbours could see the road was full of rubble, and it was only when the sun rose that they saw body parts scattered on their terraces and roofs.

Kheir Abu-Elhija, a local first responder, who was one of the first on the scene, said he had worked 20 years as a nurse and never seen anything like it.

“The second floor safe room came right down on the first floor safe room and crushed everything,” he said. “The only way we could find Manal’s remains was by a trail of blood,” he said.

The war between Israel and Iran involves powerful modern weapons that can turn a human body into vapour and scraps in an instant. Israel also has modern air defences which have managed thus far to intercept most of the incoming Iranian missiles. And for three-quarters of the country there are underground bunkers, a virtual guarantee of survival.

But the Khatib family did not have a bunker. They were Palestinian citizens of Israel, like the rest of the 37,000 population of this old hillside town in the Lower Galilee. And in common with most Palestinian-majority towns, Tamra does not have a single underground shelter. Like much else in Israel, there is nothing equal about the way death comes from the sky.

“The Israeli government, since the creation of the state, didn’t invest in one public shelter for the Arab part of society,” Tamra’s mayor, Mussa Abu Rumi, said. The reinforced “safe rooms” in new-build houses are an inferior alternative, as the fate of the Khatibs showed, and Abu Rumi said only 40% of Tamra residents even have those.

“I would like to think that the government, since missiles have become part of warfare, will start a multi-dimensional programme to invest in the Arab community, and building shelters would be part of that,” the mayor said.

Asked if he thought the current hard-right coalition would pursue such a programme, he shook his head and admitted there was “no hope”.

While missile strike sites in Tel Aviv, Rishon ReZion and Bat Yam have been flooded with rescue workers, home front troops, police and volunteers, most of the clear-up in Tamra was done by neighbours and a handful of municipal workers.

Taking a water break on a shaded terrace, Azmeh Kiwan and his elder brother Bassam, who live directly across from the Khatib house, made clear in an interview they identified themselves as Israeli Arabs. Tamra is an ancient Arab village, they pointed out.

“I am from here. I belong to this place and I will die here,” Azmeh said. The brothers also declared themselves fully behind the war against Iran, a country they described as wellhead of terrorism.

It was only afterwards, when the tape recorder was off, that another neighbour came forward to vent his anger, which he claimed was shared by all of Tamra, at a video that had circulated since last night.

It was filmed from a nearby Jewish town, and showed missiles and Israeli interceptors streaking across the black sky, but when a missile falls short and slams into Tamra, you can hear people around the camera rejoicing.

“To the village! To the village!” one man cries, and then several women’s voices join in, someone starts clapping and together they sing a verse that has become a Jewish extremist anthem. It consists of one line: “May your village burn” sung over and over again.

“Please write about this,” the neighbour said. “If I say anything I will have 20 police cars at my house.”

Abu Rumi said he knows where the video was made, and has informed the Israeli government and the police, but has little expectation of anyone being brought to justice.

“We are trying to engage with Israeli society all the time,” the mayor said. “What we find is hatred, and people who don’t see you as a legitimate human being in this place.”

He said the centre in Israeli politics had collapsed, and with it the few protections Palestinian citizens of Israel could count on.

“The political power that the settler parties have in government is creating this division,” he said. “They just see you as an Arab no matter where you are from.”

Ayman Odeh, a member of the Knesset who is a personal friend of the Khatib family, said: “There is a connection between the politics of this government and those who are celebrating this terrible situation.”

Odeh argued that war with Iran is just the latest symptom of an untreated wound at the heart of the Middle East.

“It is all connected to the Palestinian issue, and as long as we do not resolve the Palestinian issue we will keep going in circles for ever,” he said. He added that it was also the outcome of Benjamin Netanyahu’s need for conflict to stay in office.

“Netanyahu is using this war for political reasons,” Odeh said. “He’s putting everyone in danger in the region with this war, and the war in Gaza. This is the most fascist and dangerous government that we ever had, and it is a danger to everyone.”