Politics and Government
The growing influence of fundamentalist Islam has been noted by several scholars.
In 1999, 500 residents were hurt in riots protesting government expropriation of lands. In September 2000, rioting at the onset of the Second Intifada left three dead and over 100 wounded. Since the 1990s, the municipality has been run by the Northern Islamic Movement. Ex-mayor Sheikh Raed Salah was arrested in 2003 on charges of raising millions of dollars for Hamas. He was freed after two years in prison. Sheikh Hashem Abd al-Rahman was elected mayor in 2007, and replaced in November 2008 by Khaled Aghbariyya.
In a survey of Umm al-Fahm residents conducted by and published in the Israeli-Arab weekly Kul Al-Arab in July 2000, 83% of respondents opposed the idea of transferring their city to Palestinian jurisdiction.
Read more about this topic: Umm Al-Fahm
Famous quotes containing the words politics and/or government:
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
“I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)