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The war of dependence By Yoav Stern Tags: Umm al-Fahm, Arabs  A salvo of shots cuts through the tranquil air. More shots, this time in a single burst. Another weapon replies with faint shots from a different neighborhood. "A pistol, perhaps?" asked one of the people present. More volleys and now fireworks, too, and everyone who had until a moment ago been serenely drinking a cup of Arabic coffee on the veranda in the winter sunshine amid the clear air of Umm al-Fahm jumps up from their seats. Light clouds of smoke, of the sort that fireworks leave behind, rise over the center of Umm al-Fahm. Advertisement A little while earlier the police had announced the cancellation, or at least postponement, of the right-wing procession through the town, and a guest passing through concludes that the inhabitants are happy about the decision. They probably decided to waste some of the ammunition they had been saving for the right-wing procession, or for the police. A pubic activist who lives in the town smiles after hearing this theory. "Are you nuts? Today the pilgrims to Mecca came home. These are shots in their honor," he said. "Stop thinking everything revolves around you people." There are weapons in Umm al-Fahm, and lots of them. Some of them are licensed, most of them are not. One resident of the city estimates that it costs between NIS 30,000 and NIS 40,000 to buy a rifle. "People who feel a need to show their power and their wealth buy weapons. This protects you from a feud with another family and demonstrates power at weddings. We are in a difficult situation and the police aren't doing anything," he says. However, to date the weapons have never been directed at the police. Even during the October 2000 riots, those who were killed in the town were killed by police gunfire. Everyone stresses, with almost total certitude, that even if the procession had been held this week, this would not have changed and the weapons would not have been aimed at visitors, welcome or not. In any case, even without having proceeded, the procession has had an effect, even if not exactly the one its organizers had hoped for. It brought about a closer connection between the town and Israel. Hundreds of Israelis, mostly Jews, have thronged to Umm al-Fahm in recent days. The art gallery has raked it in, and so have the restaurants. Even the ruling Islamic Movement has had to clarify its position. "Umm al-Fahm is an integral part of the state of Israel," said new mayor Sheikh Khaled Hamdan, who belongs to the movement, in Arabic, to the cameras and the microphones. Sheikh Hamdan, who found himself in this fracas during his first days on the job, stood the test. For anyone who was wondering, the messages he transmitted were very similar to those of his predecessor, who was accused of being too close to the establishment and the Jewish neighbors. "Umm al-Fahm opens its gates and welcomes all its Jewish and Arab visitors with no discrimination. There is a daily presence here of Jews who are involved in every area of life, and we welcome this," Hamdan said. The rightist demonstrators had planned to come into the city under the aegis of the High Court of Justice, while twisting the arm of the police in order to wave Israeli flags proudly. They were supposed to enter the city by a back door but Umm al-Fahm, front or back, is still a symbol. In the Palestinian narrative, Umm al-Fahm is the underground nickname for Palestine. It is, however, also a very Israeli city. The blue and white flies everywhere, over the city hall, at the schools, at the national Insurance Institute offices and nobody makes a fuss about this. Israel is here. The inhabitants' harbor an earnest desire to be a part of the state. A survey that was conducted recently among 500 Arab citizens from around the country shows this clearly. According to the survey, which was conducted by Dr. Yusuf Rafik Jabarin, a senior lecturer in the faculty of architecture and town planning at the Technion, 89 percent of all the Arab citizens of Israel are opposed to exchanges of territories with a future Palestinian state. The northern Triangle, including Umm al-Fahm, is even more uniform in its opposition. Ninety-six percent are opposed to the area where they live being transferred to Palestinian control. On Independence Day, Israeli flags were distributed here along with the daily newspapers, as in the rest of the country. Ahmad Mahamid, an old friend and an inhabitant of the city, received not one flag, but 10. This week he related that for a long time he did not know what to do with the flags. "I put them in the trunk of my car and drove around with them for a while. In the end I got alarmed. If an Arab friend were to see them, he would think that I was crazy, and if a Jew were to see them, he would think the same thing," he said. Mahamid, a journalist and teacher of communications at the high school in Arara, identifies himself as leaning toward the ideas of Bnei Hakfar. This movement supports the idea of the establishment of a single state for Jews and Arabs in the entire area of historical Palestine. That is, the end of the Jewish state. However, even people who support the revocation of the Jewish state know that at the moment this isn't about to happen. "Our mouths are linked by a pipeline to the flour mill in Haifa or to the Ashdod port. If there are riots in the city and they don't send flour, we will not have bread. No one is going to parachute sacks of flour into Umm al-Fahm and in any case, it is impossible to think about independence, but only about integration into the state," said Mahamid. In a conversation with him this week, he explained that Jewish settlers in the territories like Baruch Marzel are in fact acting in accordance with his own movement's vision. "They, and the state of Israel with them, are doing everything they can to expand the settlements," he said. "In effect they are acting in favor of implementing the one-state solution. If Marzel wants us outside the state of Israel, let him establish a Palestinian state. But he is doing the opposite." Bookmark to del.icio.us   The perfect storm The Madoff scam is a perfect storm for an outpouring of anti-Semitic web posts. Anne Frank A wax figure of Anne Frank is on display in Berlin's Madame Tussauds.

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