Word: arabized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Even by the brutal standards of the Middle East, it was a savage assault. As midnight approached, four Arab men stole into an Israeli army camp and, using a huge ax and several knives, hacked three soldiers to death. Assuming the killers were Palestinians from the occupied territories, Jews at first saw the attack as yet another terrorist engagement that fell within the unwritten rules of the region's slow-burn war. But then came the stunner: the alleged assailants, apprehended last month, were not aggrieved residents of the territories but citizens of Israel -- Arab citizens, "our Arabs," as Jewish...
Israeli authorities have long feared that the intifadeh, the Palestinian uprising in the territories, would spread to the country's 710,000 Arab citizens, who make up 14% of the population. Now they are wondering if the February murders, near the northern kibbutz of Galed, were just an opening act. Leaders of the Arab community are at pains to stress that the attack was an aberration, that their people remain loyal citizens of the state. But no amount of oath swearing can dispel the truth that the Arabs of Israel have + become increasingly radicalized, both by the spirit...
Officially, the Islamic Movement's main mission is to revitalize religion among the Muslims of Israel, who constitute 86% of the Arab population; the rest are Christian. But it also supports the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories, a view held by the vast majority of Israeli Arabs -- who simultaneously say they would not live there. Beyond that, the Islamic Movement, like its counterparts elsewhere, supports the idea of a Muslim regime eventually ruling the entire Middle East -- including Israel and its Jewish majority. Says Abdul-Rahman Hashem, deputy mayor of Umm el-Fahm, an Arab town...
Naturally, such comments make Jewish officials squirm. "To say the least, we don't like their ideology," says Alexander Bligh, the Prime Minister's adviser on Arab affairs. "We can live with it as long as it's not translated into violent acts." But the Galed attack has made the government more wary of the movement...
That task is growing more difficult as the movement expands. In local elections in 1989, the group took 28.7% of the seats in the 12 purely Arab municipalities in which it ran, winning control of five town councils and later adding two more in subsequent contests. By all accounts, the organization's influence has increased since those elections. The movement has inherited some support from Israel's largely discredited Communist Party, previously the most successful vote getter among Israeli Arabs, and has bolstered its standing by providing relatively clean and efficient administrations...