Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Israel to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for a Museum of Tolerance, a trip that was planned more than a year ago.

Naturally, this has caused an outbreak of seething and whining from the US Arab community: Schwarzenegger Israel Trip Irks Arabs.

“He’s going to disappoint a lot of people here and all over the world,” said Sam Ali, originally from Egypt, as he parked his car in an Anaheim neighborhood that features a growing number of shops catering to Arab-Americans.

Ali, 29, said he voted for Schwarzenegger in last year’s recall after deciding that former Gov. Gray Davis was ineffective. But he echoed the sentiments of nearly everyone else interviewed in the district known as “Little Arabia” in expressing deep disappointment over the governor’s Israel itinerary.

“He should be working to make peace between both sides,” he said. …

“It’s his prerogative to visit, but he should be fair to all races and religions,” said Mohammed Abdullah, 46, a Palestinian-American who works as a butcher in Anaheim.

Did he vote for Schwarzenegger? “Unfortunately,” Abdullah said. …

The Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations plans to issue a report Monday that the group says will document an increase in anti-Muslim incidents nationwide. Its Anaheim-based California branch will issue a separate report about hate crimes in the state.

The group said California has the nation’s highest number of incidents and largest population of Muslims, about a million.

A spokeswoman for the California branch, Sabiha Khan, offered a cautious response to Schwarzenegger’s plan to attend Sunday’s groundbreaking for the Simon Wiesenthal Center museum of tolerance and meet with Israeli government leaders, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

“We welcome his trip abroad to learn more, and we hope that since he’s interested in tolerance that he takes a trip to the Palestinian side to see the devastation they are living through under the occupation,” Khan said.

Others take a more strident approach. A Connecticut-based group known as Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, called on members in California to contact the governor to demand that he cancel his trip, asserting the museum will be built on land “stolen by Israel.”