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Officials: Tiberias was tense long before October 2000 riots Tiberias had been seething with Jewish-Arab tension for almost a year prior to the Jewish rioting in the city, senior municipal officials told the Or Judicial Commission of Inquiry yesterday. The rioting had followed violent disturbances in the Israeli Arab sector in early October 2000. The tension began in November 1999, when members of the Arab Monitoring Committee together with Islamic fundamentalist leaders headed by former Umm el-Fahm mayor Sheikh Ra'ed Salah, demanded the right to pray in an abandoned building on the city's boardwalk, which had once served as a mosque. Tiberias mayor Benny Kiryati and municipal councilman Eitan Oved told the committee that Salah brought hundreds of worshipers to the building, known as the Bachri mosque, and delivered a virulently anti-Israel sermon. In another incident, a group of 1,000 Israeli Arabs marched down the city's main street, blocking the road and causing merchants to close their shops. Oved told the committee that at one point during his negotiations with Israeli Arab leaders, the leaders threatened to bring up to 30,000 worshipers to Tiberias if they did not get what they wanted. Oved said the leaders wanted to 'conquer' Tiberias. In March 1999, the council met to discuss a compromise solution proposed by Matan Vilna'i, then-minister in charge of the Arab sector, according to which the city would renovate the Dahar al Omar mosque - once the city's major mosque - and allow small groups of worshipers to pray there. One clause stipulated that until the renovations were finished, Muslims were to refrain from praying at the Omar or Bachri mosques. The compromise enraged Tiberias residents, who stormed the council hall and set fire to the doors of the municipality building. Council members also received death threats, said Oved. According to another clause, a government committee would determine ownership of the Bachri mosque and decide whether it should be a house of worship or a museum. Oved said that in the months leading up to the current violence, there had been many Jewish-Arab clashes in the city. During yesterday's commission hearing, Kiryati charged that the police had overreacted to the demonstrations in Tiberias during the Jewish riots. The rioters were only letting off steam, and were not out to get the police, he said, adding that he had seen no attempts to attack Arab passersby. 'The demonstration was a protest,' he said. 'It came after a long period of siege. Jews had been attacked and suffered casualties. We could have handled the demonstration without the police.' But Oved painted a different picture. He said criminal elements and members of fringe religious groups 'started fires and shouted through megaphones to seize Arabs. The mob began to look for anyone who looked Arab. I saw police protecting Arabs. They rushed towards the Omar mosque and started to smash the stones off the building. At one point, a mob attacked a group of Oriental tourists, among them women and children. The police intervened to stop them.' Oved said the police were badly treated by the mob. 'The crowd hit them with anything they could get their hands on. They cursed them and tore off the commander's insignia. Without the police intervention, the situation in the city could have gotten a lot worse.'
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