Israeli-Arab Hero Is Praised, but Not Embraced
Something about the tall thin man waiting at the bus stop struck Rami Mahamid as suspicious. There was all that dust on his shoes and then there was that big black duffle bag in his hand.

He was a fellow Arab. But Rami, who is 17 and Israeli, thought the stranger was Palestinian, and feared he was a suicide bomber.

What happened next illuminates the problems faced by Israel's Arab minority, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the population of 6.6 million. It may also, perhaps, supply proof that Jews and Arabs can live together here, along with evidence of the suspicions that drive them apart.

Rami saved an untold number of Israelis by alerting the police. But he was wounded after he stepped in, and he later found himself bound in a hospital, suspected by the Israeli police and the internal intelligence service of being the bomber's accomplice. They kept him shackled for two days after he was lucid enough to explain what happened, he said. Other Israeli Arabs, after all, had helped Palestinian terrorists.

But Rami foiled one. There were just the two of them last Wednesday at the bus stop by an Israeli Arab town, Umm el-Fahm, so Rami politely asked to borrow the man's cellular telephone. He walked a few feet away and dialed 1-0-0 — the Israeli police. Speaking softly, he shared his suspicions.

Then Rami walked back, returned the telephone, and sat down beside the stranger, giving nothing away.

"I felt I did what I was supposed to do," Rami said today, seemingly puzzled by the suggestion that he might have simply walked away, or run, from the whole matter.

A policeman, Moshe Hizkiya, arrived with his partner in time to prevent the next bus from stopping for the waiting men, the police said. When the policemen demanded to examine the man's bag, it exploded, killing Mr. Hizkiya and the bomber. Rami had edged away, but not far enough.

He was conscious of a horrible blast, of body parts around him, of searing pain. Then he awoke to find himself in Ha Emek Hospital here, badly wounded and under guard, shackled to his bed.

"They didn't believe me," he said as he lay in the same bed today. "I felt harmed, and very angry."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/26/international/middleeast/26ISRA.html