11 arrested in Lod brawl after far-right ‘sovereignty march’ in Arab neighborhood

Eleven people, including a woman and a minor, were arrested late Sunday night in a brawl involving dozens of people in Lod following a far-right march through an Arab neighborhood in the central city, police said.

Police denied reports that any stabbing took place, after far-right activists led a self-proclaimed “sovereignty march” in an Arab area of the mixed Arab-Jewish city.

Lod Mayor Yair Revivo said in a statement that “extremists came from outside the city to stoke tensions” and were joined by some 20 boys and teens from a local yeshiva high school.

Revivo said that after police dispersed the group, the local boys chanted derogatory slogans outside Arab homes, sparking a “violent altercation that ended with injuries and arrests on both sides.”

“I’m seething with rage,” he said. “A group came from outside, set the area on fire and disappears, leaving us to deal with the consequences.”

Revivo added that since the May 2021 violence that wracked mixed Arab-Jewish cities, including Lod, “we’ve managed to maintain relative calm in the city.”

זיו ברנס ומרדכי דוד:
״באנו ללוד להחזיר את המשילות, עשרות ניידות הגיעו כדי לשמור על הערבים״ pic.twitter.com/VGIXIuJFeN

— אלירן דהן (@elirandahan12) November 8, 2026

“I have no intention of letting anyone take us back to those horrible days,” Revivo said, calling on both Jewish and Arab community leaders to “talk to the youth” in their respective communities.

Revivo also said he updated Shin Bet chief David Zini about the developments and “the genuine fear of another escalation.”

“It’s disturbing to me that police and I have been alone in this situation for hours,” Revivo said late Sunday evening. “It would be too bad for the Shin Bet and politicians to wake up when it’s too late.”

Far-right activists Mordechai David and Ziv Baranes, both prominent supporters of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, posted videos from Lod on Instagram Sunday evening that showed them walking through an Arab neighborhood with several religious youths in what the activists called a “sovereignty march.”

https://x.com/lee_ayash/status/2119553967525093556

David claimed in a video he posted that the march was a response to an attack by Arabs on Jews in Lod.

Baranes said in one of his videos that the unprecedented 19 seats that Arab parties won in the October 27 Knesset election “opened up the appetite” of Arabs in Lod: “We’re showing them who’s the landlord,” Baranes said, echoing a common campaign slogan from Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party.

Footage posted by Baranes from the Arab neighborhood also showed the youths chanting “Jews’ state,” yelling “out” in Arabic and conducting an evening prayer in public.

In May 2021, clashes and rioting broke out in a number of mixed Arab-Jewish cities including Lod, Acre, Ramle and others, during the 11-day war with Gaza known as Operation Guardian of the Walls. The fighting, the worst internecine clashes inside Israel in many years, sparked fears at the time of a widespread civil war.

The riots five years ago began with thousands of Arab Israelis participating in violent demonstrations in mixed cities. Jewish Israelis participated in violent counter-demonstrations in response to the riots, in some cases incited by Jewish supremacist extremist organizations. Arab and Jewish mobs attacked passersby in some cases, severely maiming them or worse.

Aside from the deaths and injuries, synagogues, a mosque, apartments and cars were burned, citizens were stoned and homes were looted. Police failed to gain control of these violent disturbances for days.

In the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 invasion of southern Israel and the subsequent Israeli war on Hamas in Gaza, many Israeli figures worried that such violence would resurge, but tensions in mixed cities never spilled over into the violence seen in 2021.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.