Over 35 wounded in sectarian clashes in northern Israel
Druze and Muslim Arabs clash in village of Abu Snan in Western Galilee in wake of security-related tensions inside Israeli-Arab community.
Violent clashes broke out late Friday night between Druze and Muslims from Israel's Arab community. Over 35 people were wounded in the brawl, which soon developed into riot, which some say is connected to recent tensions between Israeli Arabs and security forces, which have also clashed in wake of a police shooting of a young Arab man a week ago.
The clashes erupted on Friday evening in Abu Snan, an Arab local council in the Western Galilee, with both sides throwing rocks at one another and targeting either Muslim or Druze homes. Shots were also fired in the air, causing some shrapnel injuries. Over 37 people were given medical care at a local hospital.
A massive number of police forces are currently still in the area, serving as a human barricade between Muslim and Druze residents. They are being backed-up by a police helicopter and large number of forces from throughout the region, after hours of overnight efforts finally managed to subdue the violence.
The clashes, it seems, resulted from a prior event related to ongoing tensions in Israel between security forces and Arabs in wake of the police shooting of Khair Hamdan last Saturday.
Hamdan was shot in his back by the police in Kfar Kanna last Saturday after attacking a police van with a knife. The event sparked massive protests throughout the Arab sector, leading the predominately Muslim community to take to the streets.
However, unlike their Muslim brethren, Israel's Druze population, also ethnic Arabs, who emerged 1,000 years ago as a sect of Islam with a distinct identity, serve in the army and are in a sense more interrelated into mainstream Israeli society, were reluctant to take part in the post-shooting protests and riots, straining tensions within many mixed Muslim and Druze Arab communities.
In a recent event which is said to be the cause for the riots, two Muslim-Arab schoolchildren arrived at school with a keffiyeh – a headscarf sometimes used to symbolize the Palestinians struggle for statehood – in a sign of solitary with Hamdan. Violent clashes ensued, with Druze and Muslim students locking horns within the school. Friday's event is said to be a continuation of the violence which began at school.
Head of the regional council, Nihad Mishluv, has already held three emergency council meetings in wake of the event, and said that "the village is calm despite what is being said that there are problems because some kids came to school with a keffiyeh.
"This was a problem for some students and that very same day school officials managed to intervene and diffuse the tensions."
