A war within
IT’S THE SABBATH, AND DOZENS OF Jewish young men are strolling through a mostly Arab neighborhood wearing yarmulkes and white shirts, M-16s slung over their shoulders or pistols in their waistbands. They move as if this were a settlement in an Arab city in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and they were the locals, even the landlords.
But the young men aren’t locals, and this only feels like the West Bank. It’s Lod, a mixed Arab-Jewish city around 15 miles from Tel Aviv, and the new front in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The two peoples have contested the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the river Jordan for a century. And on maps, each has its own area. But the reality on the ground is the 300 armed men afoot in Lod.
