Police arrest teen suspect in deadly Ramle blast; 500 cops conduct raids
After 4 killed and 9 injured, residents of Ramle say violence in the city is ‘unbearable;’ local councilman says police unmotivated when it comes to Arab victims of crime
Police on Friday arrested a 17-year-old on suspicion of involvement in the previous day’s blast and fire in the central city of Ramle that killed four people and wounded nine others.
Authorities said the attack is believed to be linked to criminal activity in the city, and was not being investigated as a terrorist attack.
Police said the teen, a resident of Ramle, was detained following both overt and covert investigations. Other details of the probe remain under a police gag order.
Some 500 police officers carried out raids early Friday morning in the cities of Ramle and Lod as well as in the unrecognized Arab village of Dahmash in connection to the deadly car blast on Thursday.
The police forces were joined by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who vowed on Friday that the police were “going to war” after years of turning a blind eye to organized crime in the Arab community. Ben Gvir has been accused by critics of neglecting Arab crime since entering office and shelving a plan by the previous government to tackle deadly killings in the community.
A preliminary investigation into the deadly vehicle blast on Thursday, which sparked a fire that spread to two nearby stores, indicated that it was the result of a grenade stolen from the Israel Defense Forces and possessed by someone already known to police, Channel 12 reported on Friday.
The attack is thought by police to have been tied to an ongoing dispute between the Jarushi and Abu Zaid crime families, and the car and nearby stores are believed to be connected to the Jarushis, according to reports in Hebrew media.
The four victims killed in the explosion were identified by Hebrew media as Daa Abu Halawa, 50, and her two children Sila, 14, and Muhammad, 10, as well as Leen Mugrabi, age 24.
דועאא אבו חילווה, בתה בת ה-8 סילא, אחיינה בן ה-10 מוחמד ולין מוגרבי הם הקורבנות באחד מפיגועי הפלילים הקשים שהתרחשו בישראל בשנים האחרונות. בבתי החולים אסף הרופא וקפלן הצוותים הרפואיים ממשיכים לטפל בעוד שמונה פצועים מהאירוע הקשה – בין הפצועים גם בנה של לין, רק בן חודשיים, מצבו אנוש… pic.twitter.com/FbhuPnhe3s
— אור רביד | Or Ravid (@OrRavid) September 13, 2024
Mugrabi’s two-month-old son was critically wounded in the attack and doctors said on Friday that his injuries remained life-threatening. The Kan public broadcaster said the attack had targeted Mugrabi, who was the daughter-in-law of Kamal Jarushi, head of the crime family.
Police said Friday they had seized weapons during the early morning raids, including one Glock handgun. Several people were arrested on suspicion of possessing illegal weapons, but most were later released due to a lack of evidence against them, the Kan public broadcaster reported.
Police also arrested dozens of West Bank Palestinians who were in Israel without a permit, they said.
Elsewhere in Israel, a man in his 40s was shot dead Friday in the central Arab city of Tira, in an incident that police said also had an apparent criminal motive.
Paramedics said they discovered the man lying unconscious on the road, and pronounced him dead at the scene.
On Friday morning, several Ramle residents wrote to Ben Gvir, who oversees the police, telling him they felt “deep frustration and harsh disappointment in your management of matters related to our personal security.”
“In the last few weeks, our city has become a playground for criminal gangs that threaten residents’ safety, Jews and Arabs alike, with unfathomable cruelty,” they wrote, according to Channel 12.
“The situation in the city today is unbearable. How can it be that residents of a city in the heart of the State of Israel are forced to live in constant fear?”
בתום הערכת מצב שקיים במהלך הלילה מפכ"ל המשטרה רנ"צ דני לוי יצאו כוחות רבים של מחוז מרכז לפעילות ממוקדת במתחמי משפחות הפשע – החל משעות הבוקר מבצעים את הפעילות כ-500 שוטרים, שאיתרו עשרות תושבי איו"ש ללא אישורי שהייה ותפסו אמצעי לחימה. הפעילות נמשכת pic.twitter.com/cBG9qjyZXv
— משטרת ישראל (@IL_police) September 13, 2024
Ben Gvir entered office as security minister in late 2022 vowing to crack down on Arab community crime, but homicides have continued unabated, with 109 members of the Arab community killed in violent crimes in the first half of 2024, according to the Abraham Initiatives nonprofit.
Many Arab Israeli community leaders have accused police of failing to crack down on powerful criminal organizations and largely ignoring the violence, which includes family feuds, mafia turf wars and violence against women.
Speaking at the scene of the attack on Thursday, Ben Gvir laid the blame on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, for refusing his request to use powers of administrative detention against criminal suspects.
The practice — which is used to hold Palestinian and Jewish terror suspects without trial for extended periods of time — is highly controversial, and the notion of using it to fight crime has been met with pushback from security officials.
“If we could go tonight and arrest all the crime families, all the criminals, it would change the situation,” Ben Gvir said. “We know exactly who they are, we have lists of them, which we presented to the attorney general a year ago and six months ago — it’s the same people.”
In an interview with Kan news on Friday, Rais Abu Sayyaf, a member of the Ramle city council, accused police of indifference when the victims of crime are Arab, and took issue with claims that locals don’t cooperate with investigations.
“There are no police in Ramle, there’s chaos. And some of them try to say that Arabs don’t cooperate. It’s not true. All the information to get to an arrest is there. But there’s a lack of motivation,” he said.
“The job of the police is to protect my life and yours. You see patrol cars and police officers, but the moment it’s Arabs [who are victimized], there’s no motivation. Otherwise, how do you explain that last year there were 246 murders?”
