in the mixed city of Lod, Ramadan is prepared with anxiety – L’Express

This Tuesday, March 5, is market day in Lod, but Ahmed Abu Shareh, who runs one of the main pastries in this town of 86,000 people located near David Ben Gurion airport (Tel Aviv), looks on ‘a desolate look on his trays knafeh and others kadaïfs. Usually, its customers have to squeeze through the boxes stored in the entrance and queue to be served as Ramadan approaches, the holiest month in the Muslim calendar, which begins this Sunday, March 10.

But since the events of October 7 and the war against Hamas in Gaza, activity has been at half-mast and nothing seems to be able to revive it – not even the increasingly fragile hope of seeing success, before the start of this holiday, the negotiations to reach a ceasefire against the release of the hostages, or the relief which followed the announcement of the Jewish state, according to which the number of Arab faithful of Israel authorized to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount would not be restricted.

“No one has the heart to celebrate anything”

“People are afraid. They no longer take the road to come to the market and street vendors from Hebron [NDLR : en Cisjordanie]of Jewish or Arab faith, are also absent subscribers”, laments this thirty-year-old, who had to thank most of his employees and couriers, for lack of orders or work permits, withdrawn from the living forces of the Palestinian territories.

“Before October 7, our catering activity ran at a rate of four to five events per week,” continues Ahmed Abu Shareh. “Now, when we use our services, the number of guests is divided by 10. We had already experienced this during Covid, but here, it’s different: no one wants to order pastries. People lack money for basic products and above all, no one has the heart, in this period of mourning, to celebrate anything. They almost dread the arrival of Ramadan,” sighs this resident, showing us the absence of traditional decorations on the shelves of local convenience stores. “In previous years, here, it would have felt like Las Vegas,” he adds.

Because in Lod, populated by 72% Jewish residents (a third of whom are immigrants) and 28% Arabs (mostly Muslim), this month of fasting stirs up painful memories. During the last major escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, at the end of Ramadan in May 2021, the city was the scene of violent clashes between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, following, in particular, the evacuation of the al-Aqsa Mosque. Considered the epicenter of these riots, even if the unrest spread to Haifa, Bat Yam and Jaffa, Lod had deplored two victims, one Jewish, the other Arab. A trauma from which the inhabitants barely had time to recover.

The specter of May 2021

“Every Ramadan, we fear that Jewish blood will be shed. Many here want disorder,” confides, in front of a vegetable stall, a woman from Tajikistan, echoing the declarations of the head of the political branch of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who in a televised address called on “fellow citizens of Jerusalem, the West Bank and the busy interior to go en masse” to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the first day of Ramadan, “in order to break the siege which is imposed”.

Dressed in faded jeans and all-terrain boots, her head covered in a black hijab, Kholod Alzinati, 36, gives another interpretation of the events. “I took up my duties last December, in the most complicated period ever”, announces, in the preamble, the one who works as coordinator for the social cohesion of the “mixed” localities (where Jews and Arabs coexist) of Lod and of Ramla, within the Abraham Initiatives organization.

“With its predominantly religious Jewish and Arab communities, Lod presents itself as a city that is both conservative and infinitely complex. The different communities hardly mix and coexistence is an abstract notion. As a result, communication between Arab residents and the municipality is doing badly,” she asks.

Muezzin and “Garin torani”

A member of the Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the mayor, Yair Revivo, who began his second term at the end of February, openly supports the groups of religious Zionists who arrived in the city around ten years ago, known as of garin torani. Although no incidents linked to the war have been reported since October 7, the population nonetheless lives in absolute fear of reliving the events of May 2021.

As young Kholod Alzinati recalls, the situation remains very tense. Some residents of the city, which has four mosques, “complain about the volume of the muezzin”, while Arab residents criticize the municipality for its policy of police harassment towards them and its favoritism towards garin torani. “In addition, many Arab residents of Lod have family in Gaza,” continues this social activist whose father, born in the Palestinian enclave, lost 13 relatives during the military operation. My family is paying the high price, but in Israel, the other side doesn’t want to see our suffering, as if everything stopped on October 7.”

For lawyer Khaled Zabarka, member of the popular committee of Lod, where he comes from, “no need to have a relative in Gaza to be shocked by what is happening there”, points out the one who participates, before the Supreme Court , to an appeal against the decision to close the investigation against five Jewish residents suspected of being linked to the death of Arab resident Moussa Hassouna in May 2021, on the grounds that the investigation was allegedly botched. “Since October 7, the city’s Arabs have behaved responsibly. However, they remain very sensitive to threats to freedom of worship on the Esplanade des Mosques in Jerusalem. Everything must be done to ensure the respect for the status quo. Otherwise, we risk conflagration.”

Lost souls

Her hair hidden under a midnight blue hijab, Hanadi Basel does not hide her discouragement. Since September, the head of the Chicago multicultural center had worked on programming around ten events for youth around Ramadan, including two processions coordinated with the police. “It’s the culmination of our sociability, a moment of family reunion. But for several years, this celebration has become a source of anxiety,” she said, wiping away a tear. On October 7, an employee of the center lost her son, it took a long time to identify his body. For me, what happened is like a second Yom Kippur War: we lost souls on both sides. And I suffer from being looked at in town like an enemy.

At the start of the war, the center served as a shelter for people who were unable to find refuge during Hamas rocket attacks. “No one wants to have fun while the people of Gaza lack everything, but we cannot deprive our children of all joy,” concludes Hanadi Basel, who decided to maintain Ramadan celebrations in a more restricted format.

“We remain in a state of war,” she continues before deploring the increase in violence (crime, tensions between family clans, etc.), which has resumed for about two months in the Arab sector. “People have stopped having confidence in local authorities,” sighs Kholod Alzinati, of the NGO Abraham Initiatives. As in the rest of the country, the abstention rate was high during the February municipal elections. But in Lod, the number of Arab elected officials increased from 4 to 6 out of the 19 members of the council. No one presented a joint Arab Jewish list and the popular Omdim beyahad (“stand together”) movement, bringing together activists peace of the two faiths in several mixed towns, has not spread there. “Here,” slips the young single woman with a hint of regret, “this is not Jaffa.” Namely the southern part of Tel Aviv, where the values liberal and living together are more rooted.