Israeli Arabs decry inquiry report

But the overall trends are getting worse, says Issam Makhoul, an Arab legislator. "The policemen were ready to shoot from zero distance and ask questions later, because the targets were Arabs," he says. "It's part of the mentality that the Arabs are a security question. The official policy is not to deal with the problems of the Arab minority, but to deal with the Arab minority as a problem."

"Arabs are being pushed into a corner," he adds. He and other Arab leaders cite:

• An increase in demolitions of homes built without permits, even as the government pursues plans to build 30 new Jewish communities in the southern Negev area and Galilee. According to Arab leaders and Jewish activists, Arabs are forced to build illegally since, unlike in Jewish areas, the state generally never devised or approved plans that would enable legal building.

• A budget cut last month reducing Arab child allowances compared with those of Jews, in effect reversing a reform by Yitzhak Rabin that equalized them during the early 1990's.

• A recent law, officially described as a security measure, which proscribes Palestinian spouses of Arab citizens from living in Israel, potentially impacting thousands of families. Unless the public and government attitude changes "this country is doomed to chaos," says Dichter. "Countries which don't conduct civic equality among citizens are doomed to internal turbulence. We have here a time bomb and the clock is ticking and October 2000 was just the beginning."

Moshe Arens, a Likud legislator, says gaps in government allocations is only a part of the problem.

"In the last decade we've seen a radicalization of some of Israel's Arab population that expresses itself in vociferous and violent verbal attacks against the Israeli government, be it expression of support for suicide bombings, for the Hizbullah, or lauding [Syrian] President [Bashar] Assad," he says. "In any country, such behavior by citizens would be considered outrageous. I do not believe theses voices are a majority, but the rest are silent and this creates the impression among the Jewish public that the entire population is subversive."

Mr. Arens believes what is needed is for the "silent majority to "speak up more and more and make clear these voices do not speak for them."

In Israel's 55-year history there have only been four other major state-ordered inquiries: a 1974 investigation into the 1973 mideast war, the 1983 commission into the massacres of Palestinians at the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Lebanon, an inquiry into the 1994 killing of 29 Palestinian worshipers by a Jewish extremist at holy site in Hebron, and an investigation into the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The commission's recommendations are not legally binding.

• Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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