Riots in Israeli city show Arab-Jewish tension

'They didn't help us'
"They didn't help us. They didn't protect us," she said. "We are an Arab minority and they didn't stand with us."

Her downstairs neighbors declined to comment.

Walaa Ramal, 20, and her family spent six years as one of three Arab families in the apartment building where Jamal stopped to pick up his daughter, she said. In that time, her sister's car had been burned once and someone set fire to their apartment door three times, she said.

No one touched her family's apartment during the riots, but someone lit a fire in an Arab apartment one floor down. A week after the riots, its door was charred black, unable to close. Inside, soot coated the ceiling and walls, ringing framed photos of smiling couples and embroidered verses from the Quran.

Few of the building's Jewish residents would talk about what happened, and those who did wouldn't give their names.

"We had OK relations with them. Hello, hello, no more than that," said a woman in her 30s sitting in the courtyard with her family before the start of the Sabbath. Nearby, young boys kicked a soccer ball while girls shot marbles in a dirt courtyard.

"Now, relations are horrible, fighting all the time," she said. "It's time (the Arabs) go where they belong, the Old City," referring to an impoverished Arab section of town.

"I think most of the people in the building don't want them to come back," another resident said.

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