68 chapter two Contrary to the recommendations of the official Or Commission of Inquiry [presented] in 2003, in January 2008, the Attorney General decided to close the files and not to issue a single indictment against anyone responsible for the killings. Until today, ten years after the killings, no police officer, commander or political leader has been held accountable for the deaths.45 As a result of the October 2000 protests, Palestinian citizens paid a high economic cost. Businesses suffered tremendously during September and October when many Palestinian shop owners participated in a general strike to protest Israeli aggression. In addition to the economic costs, there was an immeasurable psychological toll living in an increasingly polarized and tense society. Surfacing with the events of October 2000 and the Or Commission, and confirmed by the political encounters that followed and are explained below, Palestinians inside Israel continue to be defined as a ‘security threat’ and an ‘internal enemy’ by the state. Acre Riots of 2008 On the night of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Halacha (body of religious laws) instructs religious Jews to fast and abstain from most activity, including driving. While driving is not legally prohibited on this day, and instead only shops and recreational institutions are required to be closed, secular Jews and Palestinian-Arabs are nevertheless unable to act otherwise. As a result, residents of so-called ‘mixed cities’ like Acre undergo a type of curfew on Yom Kippur. On October 8, 2008, Tawfiq al-Jamel, an Arab resident of Acre drove with his teenage son and family friend to pick up his daughter from one of the mixed areas in the city. Upon entering the mixed area, a group of Jewish youth pelted their car with stones claiming he had violated the religious laws for that day. Al-Jamel and his son sought sanctuary in the home of a relative as a mob of Jews gathered outside threatening the family and chanting “death to the Arabs.” Once news spread of the family’s besiegement, hundreds of Arab youths gathered to come to their assistance in the Old City and marched to the city centre, smashing shop windows along the way in a display of anger. In subsequent days, Jewish gangs roamed Acre’s streets, torched several Arab homes, and forced dozens of Palestinian-Arab families living in Jewish-dominated areas around Acre to flee. The Acre riots lasted for just under a week and were yet another in a line of incidents that showed the state’s policy of systematic discrimination 45 Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, The Inequality Report, 55.