UMM EL-FAHM, Israel, Oct 27, (Agencies): Dozens of Jewish extremists hoisting Israeli flags defiantly marched through this Arab-Israeli town Wednesday, chanting “death to terrorists” and touching off clashes between rock-hurling residents and police who quelled them with tear gas.
As the unrest unfolded, an Israeli court convicted a prominent Arab-Israeli activist of spying for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in a plea bargain that will send him to prison for up to 10 years.
The court case and the violence in Umm el-Fahm added to mounting tensions between Israel’s Jewish majority and its Arab minority.

Israel Arabs, who make up about one-fifth of the country’s citizenry, have grown jittery amid repeated questions about their loyalty by nationalist elements in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
The Jewish extremists converged on Umm el-Fahm, one of Israel’s largest Arab towns, because it is known as a stronghold of the country’s radical Islamic Movement. It was the second time Jewish ultranationalists have marched through the town in the past year and a half. Residents called it a provocation.
Khaled Hamdan, the town’s mayor, faulted police for protecting the protesters and their leader, calling them “a madman and a bunch of racists.”
“The purpose behind this (march) clearly is to provoke and to cause chaos,” he said.
The scenes of Israeli Arabs — their faces masked by checkered headscarves, burning tires, hurling rocks at riot police and scrambling to dodge tear gas and police fire — recalled images of violence between Israeli forces and the Arabs’ Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Police said 10 people were arrested, but reported no serious injuries.

Hundreds of police deployed in the town after Israel’s Supreme Court authorized the march, which took place on the outskirts of town. Some 350 Arab residents gathered in anticipation of the rally, and youths threw rocks at police, who dispersed the crowd with tear gas and stun grenades.
Police kept journalists away from the 50-meter (yard) path of the march. But resident Amneh Jabari, a 38-year-old woman who lives along the march route, said marchers, hoisting white-and-blue Israeli flags and reciting prayers, chanted “death to the Arabs” and “Umm el-Fahm will be Jewish.”
Meanwhile, a prominent Arab-Israeli human rights activist was convicted on Wednesday of spying for Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, a statement from the Israeli justice ministry said.
In a plea bargain submitted to the Haifa district court, Ameer Makhoul “confessed to and was convicted of... espionage and aggravated espionage,” the statement said.
He also pleaded guilty to charges of “contact with a foreign agent and conspiracy to aid the enemy in time of war.”

The state dropped a charge of assisting the enemy in time of war.
The ministry said prosecutors were seeking a 10-year prison term while the defence sought a maximum of seven years.
He will be sentenced in December.
According to the revised charge sheet, a copy of which was provided by the justice ministry, Makhoul met Hassan Janna, a Lebanese-born Hezbollah recruiter living in Jordan, during a trip there “around the year 2004.”
The two remained in touch and in 2008 Makhoul agreed to help Hezbollah against Israel, it said.
Later that year, the document says, he met another Hezbollah agent in Copenhagen who installed a communications programme on Makhoul’s laptop computer through which he could send messages to the organisation.

It said Makhoul subsequently filed reports on the location of installations of the Shin Bet and Mossad — Israel’s domestic and foreign intelligence agencies — an army base and the Rafael military industries.
Makhoul provided details on access and security arrangements at the Shin Bet headquarters in the northern port of Haifa, it added.
Makhoul, whose brother Issa is a former Arab-Israeli lawmaker, heads Ittijah (the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations), a group based in Haifa that fights discrimination against Israeli-Arabs.
He was arrested in early May, shortly after fellow Israeli-Arab activist Omar Saeed was detained over similar allegations.
Charges against Saeed were reduced in a plea bargain and he was freed in September after serving a seven-month jail term.
Details about the case were initially subjected to a gag order. When it was lifted the Arab-Israeli watchdog Adalah said the men’s arrest and questioning were conducted “in gross violation of their fundamental rights to due process.”
“The illegal methods employed against Ameer Makhoul during the initial days of his interrogation include protracted sleep deprivation and continuous interrogation, while being shackled tightly to an undersized chair that was bolted to the floor to prevent it from moving,” Adalah said in July.
Saeed was interrogated for prolonged stretches of time and allowed little sleep, and neither man was allowed to see a lawyer for about two weeks after being arrested, it said.