Carmel Fire Unites Some Arabs and Jews

Israel’s Arabs and Jews, United by Flames
By ISABEL KERSHNER
New York Times
December 13, 2010

EIN HOD, Israel — The flames encircled Ed Sernoff’s house in this Israeli artists’ village in the Carmel hills near the northern port city of Haifa, licking a corner of the stone structure and cracking a window but otherwise leaving it intact. A small child’s playhouse survived in the middle of the mostly charred garden, but the chalet-style home that Mr. Sernoff’s son had built next door was destroyed.

From the Israeli Arab village of Ayn Hawd on a nearby hilltop, Zakaria Abu al-Hija looked down at the rooftops of Ein Hod, the village his father and other relatives fled, or were driven from, during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, when Israel was established, and to which the family was not allowed to return.

Most of the original Arab residents of what is now Ein Hod became refugees, landing in refugee camps in the West Bank city of Jenin or in Jordan. Yet Mr. Abu al-Hija says that those who stayed and became Israeli citizens have good relations with their Jewish neighbors in the artists’ colony, and that the deadly wildfire that broke out nearly two weeks ago and raged for four days did not distinguish between Arab and Jew.

“It hurts all of us that Ein Hod burned,” Mr. Abu al-Hija said, “no matter who is living there.”