The Tensions Inside a Mixed Jewish-Arab City in Israel

By Ruth Margalit

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Faten Alzinaty was heading to the community center that she manages in the Israeli city of Lod on Sunday morning when she noticed a familiar face. “Itzik!” she called out. A police officer wearing full body armor and carrying a semi-automatic rifle approached her, and the two embraced. “We missed you,” the officer told Alzinaty, who is Arab and has lived in Lod all her life. “What’s all this?” She scanned his getup. “It’s nothing; it’s for the camera crews,” he said. He smirked uncomfortably. “Take it off,” she told him, her smile slightly fading. “It’s way too hot.”

By day, the streets of Lod are quiet. It’s a nervous quiet—the kind that descends after an earthquake, say, or a tornado. When I arrived, on Sunday, torched, upturned cars were strewn all along a single road. Around the corner, charred dumpsters blocked the paths leading to the square where a mosque, a church, and a synagogue converge in what is known as the triangle of religions. I walked to the sound of glass crunching underfoot. Over here, a graffiti saying “Death to the Arabs” had been sprayed over but not hidden; over there, the second story of a Jewish prep school had been burned.