The few people who braved the cold and pouring rain found the doors to the Islamic Salvation Committee locked.
Earlier that day, Suleiman Ahmad Agbariya, the national chairman of the self- described humanitarian group, had been arrested by Israeli officials on charges of having transferred more than $3 million to the Hamas fundamentalist movement during the past four years.
His arrest, which came last week in the wake of the recent string of terrorist bombings in Israel, was part of an all-out war on Hamas that had been declared by the Peres government.
But unlike the crackdowns on Hamas carried out by Israeli and Palestinian security officials in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Agbariya, an Israeli citizen who is an Arab, was arrested in the heart of the country.
With a population of 35,000, Um-el-Fahm, located between Hadera and Afula, is the second largest Arab population center in Israel after Nazareth.
Agbariya also is deputy mayor of Um-el-Fahm, one of four Arab municipalities where the Islamic Movement won local elections in 1993.
The movement, created years before Hamas, adheres to fundamentalist principles, but opposes the use of violence.
It gained a following among Israeli Arabs, particularly in economically depressed communities such as Um-el-Fahm, where the movement focused on providing social, educational and medical services.
Indeed, the Israeli Interior Ministry has conceded that the way the movement has administered the municipal affairs of Um-el-Fahm and other towns was exemplary.
Still, the movement’s links to Islamic Movement leaders in Israel have helped to mediate disputes between Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
After scores of Israelis were killed in four separate suicide bombings, questions arose again about the relationship between Hamas and the Islamic Movement.
Agbariya’s arrest last week came a day after Israeli security agents arrested another Israeli Arab, Said Suleimani, a resident of the village of Manshiya a- Zabda, near Haifa.
Suleimani is suspected of having smuggled from Gaza into Israel the suicide bomber who carried out the March 4 attack at Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center.
Both arrests raised questions about how closely linked the Islamic Movement in Israel and Hamas are, and to what degree Hamas could find collaborators among Israeli Arabs.
Israeli Jews have by and large learned to accept Israel’s 805,000 Arab citizens as part of Israeli society.
President Ezer Weizman was one of the most prominent voices warning last week not to draw any prejudiced conclusions against Israel’s Arabs.
Indeed, the outcry against terrorism heard in Arab communities across Israel reinforced the fact that historically, much less than 1 percent of the Arab minority has engaged in any terrorism.
Two days after the Dizengoff attack, a group of six Muslim religious leaders gathered in the Israeli Arab village of Kafr Kaseem, near Petach Tikva, and issued a religious edict condemning the terrorist attacks and ruling that they ran counter to Islamic law.
Throughout last week, Arab villages across Israel held mourning rallies to protest fundamentalist terrorism and support the peace process.
Expressions of grief and condolences came from across the Israeli Arab political spectrum.
While the arrests of Agbariya and Suleimani were particularly painful for the vast majority of Israel’s Arab citizens, in Um-el-Fahm, Islamic Movement adherents voiced their own concerns about the Israeli government’s approach toward their movement.
“Why is it that whenever there are terrorist attacks, they come here to make arrests?” asked Said Agbariya, who is related to the detained deputy mayor.
Ahmad Jabarin, another young resident of the Arab town, said he would be the first to condemn anyone who assisted the “murderers of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.”
But, he added, he doubted that his deputy mayor had anything to do with those attacks.
“This is an attempt to intimidate us,” said Sheik Raed Salah Mahajneh, the mayor of Um-el-Fahm.
Speaking during an interview at his home, he carefully chose his words and avoided linking Hamas and the Islamic Movement.
Israeli police suspected Agbariya of having raised funds in Israel as well as in the United States and Western Europe. The funds were eventually transferred to families of Hamas terrorists, police said.
Ever since the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, began in December 1987, hundreds of millions of dollars poured from Arabs living in Israel into the West Bank and Gaza for what were described as humanitarian causes.
After he was arrested, Agbariya said his fund-raising efforts were nothing more than his usual humanitarian efforts.
These efforts, he added, were directed, among other things, for the benefit of 8,500 orphans, “including 350 children of collaborators with Israel.”
Agbariya claimed that the Islamic Salvation Committee began operating six years ago, long before the Hamas suicide attacks began in 1994.
But Mayor Mahajneh said the funds may also have reached orphans of Hamas suicide bombers.
The deep suspicions about the long-term goals of the Islamic Movement linger, and future arrests of Israeli Arabs suspected of being Hamas collaborators will depend on the availability of evidence.
But the Peres government will be careful not to antagonize the general Israeli Arab population unnecessarily.
After all, recent polls have shown that 49 percent of Israeli Arab voters will support Prime Minister Shimon Peres and the Labor Party in the upcoming national elections.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
