Joint (Arab) List leader seeks to indict PM for ‘incitement’

Joint (Arab) List Chairman MK Ayman Odeh on Tuesday demanded that Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of “inciting racial hatred and defamation” against the Arab leadership in Israel.

Odeh wrote to Weinstein that “rather than spread lies, the prime minister should have backed the Knesset members from the Joint (Arab) List who strongly condemn the Islamic State terrorist organization and who on every platform oppose bloodshed and the killing of innocent people,” according to the Hebrew-language Walla website.

The Joint List chairman’s appeal came after Netanyahu on Monday launched a scathing verbal attack on Arab lawmakers and the Islamic Movement in Israel, accusing them of inciting the current bout of violence.

Taking the podium in the Knesset, Netanyahu said that Palestinian terrorism “does not come from frustration over the lack of a diplomatic solution, but from a desire to destroy us.”

“That was the motive for terrorism in the early years of Zionism and that’s what it is today,” he said. The prime minister also accused Israeli Arab leaders of having a “trail of [Islamic State] flags behind them.”

Netanyahu exhorted the country’s Arab minority to cleave to the path of coexistence, and “to repel the radicals among you.”

“I beseech you, choose the right path, the path of coexistence,” he added.

Palestinian groups and Arab Israelis in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and northern Israel have declared Tuesday a “Day of Rage,” urging mass demonstrations against the Israeli government and its policies, amid a series of daily terrorist attacks carried out against Israeli civilians across the region. At the same time, leading Arab politicians called on municipalities and local authorities to participate in a general strike Tuesday to protest changes it accuses Israel of planning to make to the status quo on the Temple Mount, home to the al-Aqsa Mosque — considered to be one of Islam’s holiest sites and the holiest site in Judaism.

The Israeli government has repeatedly denied that it intends to make any such changes. Jews are currently allowed to visit the Temple Mount but not to pray there.

The security cabinet convened Tuesday at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem to discuss new security measures after a series of terror attacks left three people dead and several more injured earlier that morning in a major escalation of ongoing violence.

Netanyahu was scheduled to attend a commemoration event at Mount Herzl in honor of the late right-wing minister Rehavam Zeevi, who was assassinated by Palestinian terrorists in 2001, but pulled out of the event in light of the security situation.

Earlier Tuesday, speaking shortly after a pair of terrorists opened fire and hacked at passengers on a bus, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat demanded a complete closure on the West Bank and East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods, saying harsher measures were needed to battle a terror wave that has rocked the capital over the last month. Two male passengers were killed in the incident — a 60-year-old who died at the scene, and a 45-year-old who died later in hospital — and three others suffered gunshot wounds in a combined shooting and stabbing attack on Egged bus 78 in the neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv in southern Jerusalem.

In a separate attack at the same time, a man ran his car into a bus stop in central Jerusalem and then attacked pedestrians, killing one and injuring another.

The twin attacks, which took place on a morning when two East Jerusalem men also knifed pedestrians in the central Israeli town of Ra’anana, marked an intensification of the ongoing terror wave, which until now has been mostly dominated by smaller stabbing attacks.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan was also holding meetings Tuesday with security officials that will discuss closing off East Jerusalem neighborhoods and making it easier for Israeli citizens to obtain gun licenses.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.