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| By israelinsider staff and partners April 23, 2007 |
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Residents of northern cities Haifa and Carmiel were shocked when they heard fireworks being fired in nearby Arab neighborhoods during Memorial Day ceremonies for fallen soldiers and terror victims on Sunday evening, Ynetnews reported.
At 8 pm on Sunday evening, a one-minute siren sounded to mark the start of Memorial Day throughout Israel. Immediately afterwards, memorial ceremonies began at the memorial site for fallen soldiers in Carmiel. Suddenly, in the middle of the ceremony, participants heard the booms of fireworks coming from nearby Arab towns.
One of the ceremony participants said, "We're used to the calls of the muezzin five times a day, including at five in the morning, and we're even used to fireworks being shot off for occasions they celebrate when we're observing Yom Kippur, but to set off fireworks on a day like this is simply a provocation. Even if they don't observe Memorial Day, they must be really insensitive to ignore us and our pain in this manner."
A spokeswoman for the Carmiel municipality said that the Carmiel mayor would ask the representatives of the neighboring Arab towns for an explanation of the insensitive behavior and she said the acts did not display "good neighborliness."
Similar behavior was displayed in the Haifa neighborhood Halisa, close to the site where Memorial Day ceremonies were held Sunday night.
Police in Haifa investigated the incident and reported, "Patrol officers were sent to the scene and discovered that the firecrackers were set off during the henna celebration of members of an ethnic minority group." The police official added that they were searching for the person responsible for the fireworks.
A witness of the incident in Haifa told Ynetnews, "I live on the mountain ridge in Haifa. A few minutes after the siren marking the opening of Memorial Day was sounded, I heard blasts. I went out to my balcony and saw on my right, in the area of Halisa, fireworks for a full few minutes. At a certain point they stopped, and a few minutes later they started again.
"I have no doubt that they were fireworks. It's rather disturbing. This isn't exactly the day for fireworks, unless the people living there want to express protest. Fireworks on such a night are kind of hard to accept," he said.
According to reports, fireworks and firecrackers were also fired Sunday night in a neighborhood of Ramle, a city south of Tel Aviv. Police investigated and found that the fireworks were set off at a wedding celebration. |
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