Sharif, who uses only one name, said he was expecting to perform before thousands of Palestinian fans at a New Year’s Eve concert in Ramallah, the west Bank administrative capital, but he was told the day before that his concert was being canceled because of a threat to his life.

“I’m an artist and I want to sing before all audiences,” said Sharif, a member of Israel’s Arab Druse minority who sees himself as a bridge between the two sides. “I’m a man of peace, not politics. I just want to bring my music to my fans.”

Palestinian activists campaigned against his concert because he has performed before Israeli soldiers.

Palestinian police said the decision to cancel the show was based purely on security concerns. They said once they became aware of the opposition, which was organized in a Facebook campaign, they ordered the concert canceled.

“When we see people bracing to bar a controversial party like this, we interfere to prevent any tension or violence,” said Adnan Damari, a police spokesman.

Sharif said he separates his performances from politics, noting he has played in the West Bank and Gaza before and dreams of performing in Syria and Lebanon.

“I’m surprised that this was done against me — I belong to both sides,” said Sharif, 32, who performed earlier last year in the West Bank. “I’ve got to get back there and I hope it happens soon.” The Druse sect is part of the larger Israeli-Arab minority.

It wasn’t the only controversy in Ramallah on New Year’s Eve.

Palestinian singer Basel Zayed was prevented from completing his concert after he performed a song that mocked the Palestinian leadership. Under pressure from Palestinian police, organizers shut down the event.

The New Year’s incidents follow two other events in which Israeli-Palestinian dialogue meetings were thwarted because of Palestinian pressure. The activists behind the move oppose any “normalization” between Palestinians and Israelis as long as peace talks between the sides are deadlocked. Negotiators sat down in Jordan Tuesday for their first meeting in 15 months.

“The movement in Jerusalem will always demonstrate against any joint meeting as long as the peace process is stalling,” said Hatem Abdel Qader, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Jerusalem affairs.

Palestinian government spokesman Ghassan Khatib said the meetings were local initiatives — his government was not involved and did not oppose them. Even so, among the Palestinians who objected to the Israeli-Palestinian meeting were senior members of Abbas’ Fatah movement.

Palestinian activists have long called for boycotts of Israel, hoping such pressure will achieve what years of negotiations and violent uprisings have not: end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem and bring about creation of a Palestinian state.

In recent years, the Palestinians have scored several small victories, persuading some European pension funds to divest themselves of firms involved in West Bank settlement construction, for example. Several international artists, including Elvis Costello and the Pixies, have canceled performances in Israel to protest Israeli policies.

Another band, Boney M, was ordered by Palestinian concert organizers not to sing its hit “Rivers of Babylon,” which quotes a biblical passage referring to the Jewish people’s yearning to return to the biblical land of Israel.

Israel says the economic impact of the boycott campaign has been negligible and accused the activists of promoting hatred against the Jewish state.

Yossi Kuperwasser, the director general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, said “anything happening to promote peace,” such as musical performances or academic conferences, “should be accepted by the Palestinians.” Instead, he said the cancellation of such events reflects a campaign by the Palestinians to delegitimize Israel.

“They don’t accept Israel as a Jewish state as a fact, let alone its right to exist,” said Kuperwasser, whose office monitors what it says is incessant incitement against Israel in Palestinian society.

___

Mohammed Daraghmeh contributed to this report from Ramallah, West Bank.

Sharif, who uses only one name, said he was expecting to perform before thousands of Palestinian fans at a New Year’s Eve concert in Ramallah, the west Bank administrative capital, but he was told the day before that his concert was being canceled because of a threat to his life.

“I’m an artist and I want to sing before all audiences,” said Sharif, a member of Israel’s Arab Druse minority who sees himself as a bridge between the two sides. “I’m a man of peace, not politics. I just want to bring my music to my fans.”

Palestinian activists campaigned against his concert because he has performed before Israeli soldiers.

Palestinian police said the decision to cancel the show was based purely on security concerns. They said once they became aware of the opposition, which was organized in a Facebook campaign, they ordered the concert canceled.

“When we see people bracing to bar a controversial party like this, we interfere to prevent any tension or violence,” said Adnan Damari, a police spokesman.

Sharif said he separates his performances from politics, noting he has played in the West Bank and Gaza before and dreams of performing in Syria and Lebanon.

“I’m surprised that this was done against me — I belong to both sides,” said Sharif, 32, who performed earlier last year in the West Bank. “I’ve got to get back there and I hope it happens soon.” The Druse sect is part of the larger Israeli-Arab minority.

It wasn’t the only controversy in Ramallah on New Year’s Eve.

Palestinian singer Basel Zayed was prevented from completing his concert after he performed a song that mocked the Palestinian leadership. Under pressure from Palestinian police, organizers shut down the event.

The New Year’s incidents follow two other events in which Israeli-Palestinian dialogue meetings were thwarted because of Palestinian pressure. The activists behind the move oppose any “normalization” between Palestinians and Israelis as long as peace talks between the sides are deadlocked. Negotiators sat down in Jordan Tuesday for their first meeting in 15 months.

“The movement in Jerusalem will always demonstrate against any joint meeting as long as the peace process is stalling,” said Hatem Abdel Qader, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Jerusalem affairs.

Palestinian government spokesman Ghassan Khatib said the meetings were local initiatives — his government was not involved and did not oppose them. Even so, among the Palestinians who objected to the Israeli-Palestinian meeting were senior members of Abbas’ Fatah movement.

Palestinian activists have long called for boycotts of Israel, hoping such pressure will achieve what years of negotiations and violent uprisings have not: end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem and bring about creation of a Palestinian state.

In recent years, the Palestinians have scored several small victories, persuading some European pension funds to divest themselves of firms involved in West Bank settlement construction, for example. Several international artists, including Elvis Costello and the Pixies, have canceled performances in Israel to protest Israeli policies.

Another band, Boney M, was ordered by Palestinian concert organizers not to sing its hit “Rivers of Babylon,” which quotes a biblical passage referring to the Jewish people’s yearning to return to the biblical land of Israel.

Israel says the economic impact of the boycott campaign has been negligible and accused the activists of promoting hatred against the Jewish state.

Yossi Kuperwasser, the director general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, said “anything happening to promote peace,” such as musical performances or academic conferences, “should be accepted by the Palestinians.” Instead, he said the cancellation of such events reflects a campaign by the Palestinians to delegitimize Israel.

“They don’t accept Israel as a Jewish state as a fact, let alone its right to exist,” said Kuperwasser, whose office monitors what it says is incessant incitement against Israel in Palestinian society.

___

Mohammed Daraghmeh contributed to this report from Ramallah, West Bank.

Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered Saturday night in Jerusalem to protest what they say is a nationwide campaign directed against their lifestyle. The protesters called Israeli policemen Nazis, wore yellow Star of David patches with the word “Jude” — German for Jew — dressed their children in striped black-and-white uniforms associated with Nazi concentration camps and transported them in the back of a truck.

Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial denounced the use of Nazi imagery as “disgraceful,” and several other survivors’ groups and politicians condemned the acts.

“We must leave the Holocaust and its symbols outside the arguments in Israeli society,” said Moshe Zanbar, chairman of the main umbrella group for Holocaust survivors in Israel. “This harms the memory of the Holocaust.”

Six million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. About 200,000 aging survivors of the Holocaust live in Israel.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up 10 percent of Israel’s population. In the past, they have generally confined their strict lifestyle to their own neighborhoods. But they have become increasingly aggressive in trying to impose their ways on others, as their population has grown and spread to new areas.

Extremist sects within the ultra-Orthodox community have been under fire of late for their attempts to ban mixing of the sexes on buses, sidewalks and other public spaces.

In one city, extremists have jeered and spit at girls walking to school, saying they were dressed immodestly. They’ve also battled with police over street signs calling for segregation and attacked journalists who have covered their neighborhoods. In recent weeks, a few young Israeli women have caused nationwide uproars for refusing the orders of religious men to move to the back of public buses.

These practices, albeit by a fringe sect, have unleashed a backlash against the ultra-Orthodox in general, the climax of which came last week in a large demonstration where protesters held signs reading, “Free Israel from religious coercion,” and “Stop Israel from becoming Iran.”

Rabbi Yitzhak Weiss, one of the organizers of Saturday’s protest, said the use of Nazi symbols was intentional and aimed at highlighting what he said was a campaign by the secular media against his community.

“The idea was to convey a clear and simple message: that wild incitement against the ultra-Orthodox community will not be tolerated,” he told The Associated Press. “The Israeli media’s incitement is reminiscent of the German media’s before World War II.”

One of the protesters, Yaakov Israel, told Channel 2 TV that his community feels “persecuted” by the Israeli establishment. “We feel what is being done to us here is a spiritual Holocaust,” he said.

It’s not the first time ultra-Orthodox zealots have referred to the Holocaust in their political struggles. But the sight of children dressed in garb that conjures up images of the darkest period in Jewish history was unprecedented. It sparked angry rebuttals that only exacerbated Israel’s brewing religious war.

Israeli leaders condemned the display and called on the ultra-Orthodox leadership to speak out against it.

“This is a terrible offense against the memory of the Holocaust victims who were forced, secular and Ultra-Orthodox alike, to wear the yellow star in the ghetto on their way to extermination, and there is no demonstration in the world that can justify this,” said opposition leader Tzipi Livni.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the display “shocking and horrifying” and a “crossing of a red line.”

The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, an umbrella organization of U.S. survivors, expressed its “utter contempt at this disgraceful exploitation” of the Nazi symbols.

“We who survived and witnessed these Nazi crimes are particularly offended that demonstrators so blithely used children in this public outrage. They have insulted the memory of all the Jewish victims, including those who were ultra-Orthodox,” the organization’s vice president, Elan Steinberg, said in a statement.

“The Nazis made no distinction in their murderous treatment of our people — whether one was ultra-Orthodox, traditional, or nonbeliever, you were marked for cruelty and death.”

“When I walk to school in the morning I used to get a tummy ache because I was so scared … that they were going to stand and start yelling and spitting,” the pale, blue-eyed girl said softly in an interview with The Associated Press Monday. “They were scary. They don’t want us to go to the school.”

The new girls school that Naama attends in the city of Beit Shemesh, to the west of Jerusalem, is on the border between an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood and a community of modern Orthodox Jewish residents, many of them American immigrants.

The ultra-Orthodox consider the school an encroachment on their territory. Dozens of black-hatted men jeer and physically accost the girls almost daily, the students say.

Televised images of Naama sobbing en route to school have shocked many Israelis, elicited statements of outrage from the country’s leadership, sparked a Facebook page with nearly 10,000 followers dedicated to “protecting little Naama” and plans for a demonstration later Tuesday in her honor. As the case has attracted attention, extremists have heckled and thrown eggs and rocks at journalists descending on town.

“Who’s afraid of an 8-year-old student?” said Sunday’s main headline in the leading Yediot Ahronot daily.

Beit Shemesh’s growing ultra-Orthodox population has erected street signs calling for the separation of sexes on the sidewalks, dispatched “modesty patrols” to enforce a chaste female appearance and hurled stones at offenders and outsiders. Walls of the neighborhood are plastered with signs exhorting women to dress modestly in closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts.

Naama’s case has been especially shocking because of her young age and because she attends a religious school and dresses with long sleeves and a skirt. Extremists, however, consider even that outfit, standard in mainstream Jewish religious schools, to be immodest.

This week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke out against the violence. “The Israel police are taking, and will take, action to arrest and stop those who spit, harass or raise a hand. This has no place in a free and democratic state,” he told his Cabinet.

Thousands of people were expected at Tuesday evening’s demonstration. Ahead of the gathering, President Shimon Peres urged the public to attend.

“The demonstration today is a test for the people and not just the police,” Peres told a gathering of Israeli ambassadors. “All of us … must defend the image of the state of Israel from a minority that is destroying national solidarity and expressing itself in an infuriating way.”

The abuse and segregation of women in Israel in ultra-Orthodox areas is nothing new, and critics accuse the government of turning a blind eye.

The ultra-Orthodox are perennial king-makers in Israeli coalition politics — two such parties serve as key members of Netanyahu’s coalition. They receive generous government subsidies, and police have traditionally been reluctant to enter their communities.

The ultra-Orthodox Jews make up 10 percent of Israel’s population and are its fastest growing sector because of a high birth rate. In the past, they have generally confined their strict lifestyle to their own neighborhoods. But they have become increasingly aggressive in trying to impose their ways on others, as their population has grown and spread to new areas.

“It is clear that Israeli society is faced with a challenge that I am not sure it can handle,” said Menachem Friedman, a professor emeritus of Bar Ilan University and expert on the ultra-Orthodox, “a challenge that is no less and no more than an existential challenge.”

Most of Israel’s secular majority, in cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa, is not directly affected, but in a few places like Beit Shemesh — a city of 100,000 people that include ultra-Orthodox, modern Orthodox and secular Jews — tensions have erupted into the open.

Last week, a young Israeli woman caused a nationwide uproar when she refused a religious man’s order to move to the back of a bus, and in Jerusalem, the country’s largest city, advertisers have been forced to remove female faces from billboards because of persistent vandalism.

In Beit Shemesh, parents in Naama’s school take turns escorting their daughters into school property to protect them. The parents, too, have been cursed and spat upon.

Hadassa Margolese, Naama’s 30-year-old Chicago-born mother, an Orthodox Jew who covers her hair and wears long sleeves and a long skirt, says, “It shouldn’t matter what I look like. Someone should be allowed to walk around in sleeveless shirts and pants and not be harassed.”

On Monday, dozens of ultra-Orthodox men heckled AP journalists who were filming a sign calling for segregation of sidewalks outside their synagogue, chanting “shame on you,” ”get out of here” and “anti-Semites.”

Also Monday, dozens ultra-Orthodox men threw rocks at TV crews and police, and set a trash can on fire, police said. Six men were taken into custody.

City spokesman Matityahu Rosenzweig condemned the violence but said it is the work of a small minority and has been taken out of proportion. “Every society has its fringes, and the police should take action on this,” he said.

For Margolese, the recent clashes — and the price of exposing her young daughter — boil down to a fight over her very home.

“They want to push us out of Beit Shemesh. They want to take over the city,” said Margolese.

“When I walk to school in the morning I used to get a tummy ache because I was so scared … that they were going to stand and start yelling and spitting,” the pale, blue-eyed girl said softly in an interview with The Associated Press Monday. “They were scary. They don’t want us to go to the school.”

The new girls school that Naama attends in the city of Beit Shemesh, to the west of Jerusalem, is on the border between an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood and a community of modern Orthodox Jewish residents, many of them American immigrants.

The ultra-Orthodox consider the school an encroachment on their territory. Dozens of black-hatted men jeer and physically accost the girls almost daily, the students say.

Televised images of Naama sobbing en route to school have shocked many Israelis, elicited statements of outrage from the country’s leadership, sparked a Facebook page with nearly 10,000 followers dedicated to “protecting little Naama” and plans for a demonstration later Tuesday in her honor. As the case has attracted attention, extremists have heckled and thrown eggs and rocks at journalists descending on town.

“Who’s afraid of an 8-year-old student?” said Sunday’s main headline in the leading Yediot Ahronot daily.

Beit Shemesh’s growing ultra-Orthodox population has erected street signs calling for the separation of sexes on the sidewalks, dispatched “modesty patrols” to enforce a chaste female appearance and hurled stones at offenders and outsiders. Walls of the neighborhood are plastered with signs exhorting women to dress modestly in closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts.

Naama’s case has been especially shocking because of her young age and because she attends a religious school and dresses with long sleeves and a skirt. Extremists, however, consider even that outfit, standard in mainstream Jewish religious schools, to be immodest.

This week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke out against the violence. “The Israel police are taking, and will take, action to arrest and stop those who spit, harass or raise a hand. This has no place in a free and democratic state,” he told his Cabinet.

Thousands of people were expected at Tuesday evening’s demonstration. Ahead of the gathering, President Shimon Peres urged the public to attend.

“The demonstration today is a test for the people and not just the police,” Peres told a gathering of Israeli ambassadors. “All of us … must defend the image of the state of Israel from a minority that is destroying national solidarity and expressing itself in an infuriating way.”

The abuse and segregation of women in Israel in ultra-Orthodox areas is nothing new, and critics accuse the government of turning a blind eye.

The ultra-Orthodox are perennial king-makers in Israeli coalition politics — two such parties serve as key members of Netanyahu’s coalition. They receive generous government subsidies, and police have traditionally been reluctant to enter their communities.

The ultra-Orthodox Jews make up 10 percent of Israel’s population and are its fastest growing sector because of a high birth rate. In the past, they have generally confined their strict lifestyle to their own neighborhoods. But they have become increasingly aggressive in trying to impose their ways on others, as their population has grown and spread to new areas.

“It is clear that Israeli society is faced with a challenge that I am not sure it can handle,” said Menachem Friedman, a professor emeritus of Bar Ilan University and expert on the ultra-Orthodox, “a challenge that is no less and no more than an existential challenge.”

Most of Israel’s secular majority, in cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa, is not directly affected, but in a few places like Beit Shemesh — a city of 100,000 people that include ultra-Orthodox, modern Orthodox and secular Jews — tensions have erupted into the open.

Last week, a young Israeli woman caused a nationwide uproar when she refused a religious man’s order to move to the back of a bus, and in Jerusalem, the country’s largest city, advertisers have been forced to remove female faces from billboards because of persistent vandalism.

In Beit Shemesh, parents in Naama’s school take turns escorting their daughters into school property to protect them. The parents, too, have been cursed and spat upon.

Hadassa Margolese, Naama’s 30-year-old Chicago-born mother, an Orthodox Jew who covers her hair and wears long sleeves and a long skirt, says, “It shouldn’t matter what I look like. Someone should be allowed to walk around in sleeveless shirts and pants and not be harassed.”

On Monday, dozens of ultra-Orthodox men heckled AP journalists who were filming a sign calling for segregation of sidewalks outside their synagogue, chanting “shame on you,” ”get out of here” and “anti-Semites.”

Also Monday, dozens ultra-Orthodox men threw rocks at TV crews and police, and set a trash can on fire, police said. Six men were taken into custody.

City spokesman Matityahu Rosenzweig condemned the violence but said it is the work of a small minority and has been taken out of proportion. “Every society has its fringes, and the police should take action on this,” he said.

For Margolese, the recent clashes — and the price of exposing her young daughter — boil down to a fight over her very home.

“They want to push us out of Beit Shemesh. They want to take over the city,” said Margolese.