Middle East The Enemy Within

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 Israelis think of this normally pacific minority. Suddenly, it looked to the country's Jewish majority as if the enemy was now truly in their midst.

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 of the intifadeh and the attractions of Islamic extremism.

Nationalistic fervor, once quiescent among Israeli Arabs, has grown steadily since Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war. That put the Arabs in direct contact with their Palestinian brethren in the territories. With the start of the intifadeh in 1987, Israeli Arabs, in limited numbers, began to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at Jews, to fly the banned Palestinian flag and to paint radical slogans on town walls.

The February hackings near Galed underscored a potentially more disruptive development: the rise among Israeli Arabs of Islamic fervor, complete with a fanatic streak. The four Arabs charged with the killings were all followers of the Islamic Movement, a fundamentalist organization that is legal in Israel. Police say they were also members of Islamic Jihad, the outlawed militant group that is Mideast-wide.

Leaders of the Islamic Movement, who officially eschew violence, were quick to deplore the killings. But authorities are worried that when they speak and write of the need for a spiritual Jihad, ostensibly a struggle for the soul of the individual believer, their devotees hear in that call a traditional summons for a holy war against non-Muslims, especially the Jews of Israel. "The killings near Galed didn't come out of a vacuum," says Elie Rekhess, an expert on Israeli Arabs at Tel Aviv University.