Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
When Iranian missiles began to rain on Israel, many residents rushed to hide. The sirens groaned across the country while people rushed into bombs shelters.
But for some Palestinian citizens of Israel – Two million people, or about 21% of the population – doors were closed, not by the force of explosions and not by enemies, but by neighbors and fellow citizens.
Living mainly in cities, cities and villages within the international borders of Israel, many Palestinian citizens of Israel have been excluded from vital infrastructure during the worst nights of the Iran-Israeli conflict to date.
For Samar Al-Rashed, a 29-year-old single mother living in a mainly Jewish apartment complex near Acre, the reality of this exclusion came on Friday evening. Samar was at home with his five -year -old daughter Jihan. While the sirens pierced the air, warning incoming missiles, she caught her daughter and rushed to the shelter of the building.
“I didn’t have time to do anything,” she recalls. “Just water, our phones and my daughter’s hand in mine.”
The panicking mother tried to relieve the fear of her daughter, while hiding hers, gently encouraging her in Arabic with a soft voice to follow her rush steps towards the refuge, while other neighbors also descended the stairs.
But at the door of the refuge, she said, an Israeli resident, having heard him arabic, blocked their entry-and closed it on their faces.
“I was amazed,” she said. “I speak Hebrew fluently. I tried to explain. But he looked at me with contempt and I just said:” Not for you. “”
At that time, said Samar, the deep fault lines of Israeli society were exposed. Returning to her apartment and looking at the distant missiles lighting the sky, and sometimes collizing with the ground, she was terrified by sight and her neighbors.
A story of exclusion
Palestinian citizens of Israel have long been faced with systemic discrimination – in housing, education, employment and public services. Despite the holding of Israeli citizenship, they are often treated as second -class citizens, and their loyalty is systematically questioned in public discourse.
According to Adalah – The legal center for the rights of Arab minorities in Israel, more than 65 laws discriminated directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens. The law of the nation state adopted in 2018 cemented this disparity by defining Israel as “the nation state of the Jewish people”, according to the criticism of the decision, the institutionalized apartheid.
In wartime, this discrimination often intensifies.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are often subject to discriminatory police and restrictions during periods of conflict, including Arrest for publication on social networksDenial of access to shelters and verbal abuses in mixed cities.
Many have already declared that they have undergone such discrimination.
In Haifa, Mohammed Dabdoob, 33, worked in his mobile repair workshop on Saturday evening when the phones simultaneously sounded all with the sound of alerts, triggering his anxiety. He tried to finish repairing a broken phone, which delayed him. He then rushed to close the store and ran to the nearest public refuge, under a building behind his shop. Approaching the refuge, he found his hobby door locked.
“I tried the code. It didn’t work. I hit the door, I called those inside to open – in Hebrew – and I waited. No one opened,” he said. A few moments later, a missile exploded nearby, breaking the glass on the other side of the street. “I thought I was going to die.”
“There was smoke and cries, and after a quarter of an hour, all we could hear was the sounds of the police and the ambulance. The scene was terrifying, as if I lived a nightmare similar to what happened at the port of Beyrout Explosion of the port of Beirut 2020.
Frozen by a pure fear and a shock, Mohammed looked from his hiding place in a nearby parking lot while the chaos took place, and soon, the door of the shelter opened. While those who were inside the refuge began to flow, he looked at them silently.
“There is no real security for us,” he said. “Not missiles, and not people who are supposed to be our neighbors.”
Discrimination in access to the shelter
In theory, all citizens of Israel should have equal access to public security measures – including bombs shelters. In practice, the image is very different.
The Palestinian towns and villages of Israel have much fewer protected spaces than Jewish localities. According to a 2022 report by the Israel’s state controller quoted by the Journal Haaretz, more than 70% of houses in the Palestinian communities in Israel do not have a room or code space, against 25% of Jewish houses. Municipalities often receive less funding for civil defense, and older buildings go without the required reinforcements.
Even in mixed cities like Lydd (LOD), where Jewish and Palestinian residents live side by side, inequality is pronounced.
Yara Srour, a 22-year-old nursing student at Hebrew University, lives in the neglected district of Al-Mahatta in Lydd. The three -story building in his family, around four decades, has no official permit and a refuge. After the heavy Iranian bombing of which they witnessed on Saturday evening, which shocked the world around them, the family tried early Sunday to flee towards a safer part of the city.
“We went to the new part of Lydd where there are appropriate shelters,” said Yara, adding that her 48 -year -old mother, who suffers from weak knees, had trouble moving. “However, they would not let us enter. Jews in poorer areas have also been refused. It was only for “new residents”- those of modern buildings, mainly Jewish families in the middle class. “
Yara remembers the horror strongly.
“My mother has joint problems and could not run like the rest of us,” she said. “We were going, striking at the doors. But people just looked at us through judicials and ignored us, while we saw the sky light up with intercepted rocket fires.”
Fear, trauma and anger
Samar said that the experience of being diverted from a shelter with his daughter had left a psychological scar.
“That night, I felt completely alone,” she said. “I didn’t report it to the police – what is it for? They would have done nothing.”
Later in the evening, a villa in Tamra was struck, Kill four women from the same family. From his balcony, Samar looked at the smoke getting into the sky.
“It was like the end of the world,” she said. “And yet, even under attack, we are treated as a threat, not like people.”
Since then, she has moved with her daughter to her parents’ home in Daburiyya, a village in the Basse Galileo. Together, they can now snuggle up in a reinforced room. With the alerts to come every few hours, Samar thinks of fleeing in Jordan.
“I wanted to protect Jihan. She does not yet know this world. But I didn’t want to leave my land either. It is the dilemma for us – survive or stay and suffer. ”
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the attacks that “Iranian missiles target all Israel – Jews and Arabs”, reality on the ground told a different story.
Even before the war, the Palestinian citizens of Israel were arrested in a disproportionate way for having expressed political opinions or reacted to attacks. Some have been detained simply for having published emojis on social networks. On the other hand, calls for vigilant violence against the Palestinians in online forums have been widely ignored.
“The state awaits our loyalty to war,” said Mohammed Dabdoob. “But when it’s time to protect us, we are invisible.”
For Samar, Yara, Mohammed and thousands of people, the message is clear: they are citizens on paper, but foreigners in practice.
“I want security like anyone else,” said Yara. “I study to become a nurse. I want to help people. But how can I serve a country that does not protect my mother? ”
This play was published in collaboration with Egab.
