Public figures continue to arrive in the northern-coast city of Akko, following the Arab-instigated violence of Yom Kippur and afterwards. Terrorists continue to threaten.
The latest to arrive, as of Wednesday morning, have been Transportation Minister Sha'ul Mofaz (Kadima) and Knesset Education Committee Chairman MK Rabbi Michael Melchior (Labor).
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Mofaz, who recently lost a bid to head the Kadima Party and form the country's next government, said that what happened in the city on Yom Kippur is "intolerable." "In order to have co-existence," Mofaz said, "everyone must respect the other, his beliefs and his religion. No one must take the law into his own hands under any circumstances."
Mofaz met with the city's Mayor Shimon Lankri, who said he believes the unrest is essentially over and that 99% of the city's residents want quiet. Over 1,000 police officers remain in the city until after the holiday ends next week, but they are mostly inconspicuous.
MK Melchior met on Wednesday morning with leaders of the radical Islamic Movement in a "Peace Sukkah" established in Akko.
Other visitors to the city over the past few days have included President Shimon Peres, Chief Rabbis Metzger and Amar, Public Security Minister Dichter, and others.
Arab MKs Continue Discord
Sounding a discordant note in what is otherwise a large choir of outward calls for peace and harmony, Arab Knesset Members objected loudly to the arrest of the Arab who instigated the Yom Kippur violence. On Tuesday night, five days after Yom Kippur, the police finally arrested the Arab man who drove wildly, with his radio blaring, at a crowd of Jews standing on the street on the solemn day.
MK Abbas Zakour, who has been accused of inviting the busload of Arabs who perpetrated the Yom Kippur riots, said, "This arrest is political and merely a ploy to appease the Jewish hooligans."
Some Arab leaders in Akko had condemned the Arab rioters, but others distanced themselves from these statements and continued to blame the Jews.
Terrorist Threats
Some Arab groups continue not only to blame the Jews, but to threaten them as well. The latest to do so are the Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committees. Just days after Hamas threatened to "liberate Akko from the Zionist conquerors," PRC chief terrorist Abu Abir said that the "Jewish settler" public will pay the price for the recent unrest in Akko.
The threats were reported by the Targeted Actionable Monitoring Center (TAM-C) of the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, based in Israel and the United States.
Abu Abir reportedly stated that what happened in Akko proves that the "Zionists fight us in all areas of Palestine/Israel... The Zionist enemy must understand that if and when he continues to attack us, we will have no choice but to respond at any time and place... Our response will not take long, and it will be like an earthquake on the flocks of settlers, who must prepare themselves to pay the price of their leadership's stupidity. There is no problem for the noble Palestinian nation to begin a third intifada, which will be even more aggressive than its predecessors."
Dr. Yitzhak Klein, head of the Israel Policy Center, says in his blog that the crux of the problem in Akko is the continual retreat of Jewish nationalism before Arab nationalism:
Arabs sense that the State of Israel is melting away and that Jews can be victimized with impunity. The utter incompetence of the police is only the local manifestation of a larger phenomenon, whose roots are in the fiasco of the 2nd Lebanon War and the feckless politics of the Israeli left toward Palestinian nationalism. Like Fatah, Hamas and Hizbullah, ordinary Palestinians in Israel smell blood in the water. Let’s note, in this context, the events in Tzipori a couple of years ago. There was a pogrom in Tzipori, Jewish families that had come to reclaim a Jewish presence in the place were driven out, and the police, who had been sent to protect them, were the first to scurry away with their tails between their legs, leaving Jewish civilians to flee as best they could.