3 yeshiva students arrested on suspicion of injuring Arab youths, principal detained

Police arrest three yeshiva students on suspicion of pepper-spraying and injuring a group of Arab middle schoolers while hiking near a spring in northern Israel. The yeshiva principal accompanying them on the trip is detained for questioning.

Police say a “brawl broke out between two groups” who had been hiking in the area. Officers arrested “three minors suspected in the attack and detained for questioning an adult man who is responsible for the attackers,” the statement adds.

Fourteen middle schoolers from the Arab city of Sakhnin, as well as two young men in their mid-20s, were taken to the hospital with light injuries as a result of the incident.

The middle school’s principal, Kamal Abu Younis, calls the incident a “racist attack.” Speaking to the Arab48 news outlet, he says the alleged assailants hurled racist insults at the middle schoolers before pepper-spraying them.

Nati Rom, an attorney for the right-wing legal aid group Honenu, is representing the suspects and alleges the opposite, claiming police violently arrested his clients after they were “attacked by a group of Arabs.”

The yeshiva principal and his students had come from the West Bank to hike in the area, according to the organization.