Erdan asks A-G to probe Arab MKs for incitement

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan asks Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to authorize an investigation into Arab MKs Ayman Odeh, Jamal Zahalka and Hanin Zoabi on suspicion of incitement to violence and murder in the run-up to yesterday’s alleged car-ramming attack that killed a police officer.

During the incident, which took place during protests against the house demolitions in the unrecognized village of Umm al-Hiran, local schoolteacher Yaqoub Mousa Abu al-Qia’an plowed his vehicle into the officers, killed officer Erez Levi. He was shot dead by other policemen at the scene.

Police say Abu al-Qia’an carried out a deliberate terror attack, while residents insist he was not in control of his vehicle when it accelerated into Levi.

“The attack that led to the death of First Sergeant [Erez] Levi did not happen in a vacuum, and did not occur independently of the events that preceded it,” Erdan writes in his letter to Mandelblit. “The vile terrorist attack was preceded by malicious and systematic incitement sustained over a long period, in which public representatives, members of Israel’s Knesset, took part,” he says.