Suspects in assault on pregnant Arab in Jaffa released to house arrest

The three suspects accused of attacking a pregnant Arab woman have been freed to house arrest, after police requested their release before the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court earlier today.

The three are suspected of planning and carrying out a racially-motivated assault against 30-year-old Hanan Abu Shehadeh, a resident of Jaffa, while she was in her car near her home. They were arrested about a week ago, several days after the incident.

“A request was made, together with the prosecution, to conditionally release the suspects to house arrest and restrict their access to Jaffa,” a police spokesman tells The Times of Israel. The investigation into the incident is ongoing.

The court today ruled to release the three suspects to six days of house arrest, subject to limitations including the payment of bail, a ban from entering Jaffa and a ban on contacting others involved in the case.

The young men, whose names are barred for publication, allegedly hurled anti-Arab epithets at the pregnant mother and spat on her seven-year-old daughter before pepper-spraying Abu Shehadeh, her two children and mother-in-law in their vehicle.

Standing Together, a Jewish-Arab movement that organized a protest against the attack, says the police’s request to release the suspects signifies the “complete abandonment of the Arab public in Jaffa, for extremists’ benefit.”

“Rather than holding the attackers legally accountable for severe, life-threatening violence, the police are signaling to them that they can get off easy — just because the woman they assaulted was Arab,” the movement says in a statement, adding that the ruling sends a message that “the blood of Arab citizens is cheap.”

Meanwhile, the suspects’ lawyer welcomes the decision and purports that law enforcement has accepted the trio’s claim of self-defense.

“As we have argued from day one, and in complete contrast to many media outlets that were quick to classify the incident as a ‘racist attack’ on a pregnant woman, the court today ruled that my clients will be released to house arrest,” says Assaf Gonen, a lawyer representing the trio on behalf of Honenu, a right-wing legal aid group.

According to Gonen, the suspects had come to Jaffa for a walking tour and accidentally bumped into the family’s car, prompting passengers to exit the vehicle and encircle them. One of them used pepper spray in self-defense, he claims.

A police representative has claimed in past remand hearings that the suspects are hilltop youth who were involved in previous acts of violence against West Bank Palestinians.