Man in his 30s seriously wounded in car explosion in northern city of Acre
Blast lightly injures 4 others, including man’s young child; shooting in Jisr az-Zarqa moderately wounds 2, including girl; Tibi: Police should be prosecuting this, not protesters
A car exploded near a police station in the Old City of Acre Friday, seriously wounding a man in his 30s, police and medics said.
Police said the incident was likely related to a criminal dispute.
The Walla news site reported that the man’s 4-year-old son was lightly wounded in the blast in the northern city, as were a 41-year-old man and 21-year-old woman, while a 15-year-old girl sustained light to moderate wounds.
Meanwhile, in the northern Arab town of Jisr az-Zarqa, a 25-year-old man and a 5-year-old girl sustained moderate injuries from gunfire from a wedding hall while they sat at a nearby bus stop, according to the Ynet news site.
Noting the two incidents, both in Arab communities, veteran Arab lawmaker Ahmad Tibi accused the police of busying itself with “arrests on the beach because of the fistful of sand and in synagogues because of a poster of hostages.”
Three women were arrested on Friday for placing flyers calling for the release of Hamas hostages in a synagogue in Herzliya where a Likud lawmaker prays; the previous Friday, a woman was detained for allegedly tossing sand toward National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on a Tel Aviv beach.
The explosion in Acre and shooting in Jisr az-Zarqa came hours after a man in his 40s was shot dead in the central city of Tira, and a day after a car blast and subsequent fire in the central city of Ramle killed four people and wounded nine others, including a two-month-old baby.
Both those attacks were apparently also related to criminal disputes, according to police.
The Abraham Initiatives said the attacks brought to 168 the number of Arab citizens killed in violent circumstances since the start of 2024.
The watchdog has accused National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of overseeing a sharp rise in violence in the Arab community. His first year in the role, 2023, was the worst year on record, with over twice as many homicides as the previous year, according to the Abraham Initiatives.
The group said Ben Gvir had gutted a plan that his predecessor, Omer Barlev, had coordinated with Arab local leaders to combat violence in the community.
Ben Gvir, for his part, has laid the blame on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. Speaking at the scene of the attack in Ramle on Thursday, the minister said Baharav-Miara had refused his request to use administrative detention against criminal suspects. Ramle residents accused Ben Gvir of evading responsibility.
Administrative detention — 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.
