Police arrest Israelis over assault of Arab bus driver
Authorities still investigating incident, but 26-year-old Salah Abu Jamal says he was punched in the head ‘with a sharp tool’ by passenger
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
Police have arrested two Israelis suspected of assaulting a Palestinian bus driver outside the Kiryat Arba settlement in the West Bank early Sunday morning.
While authorities said they were still investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident, the bus driver, Salah Abu Jamal, told Channel 10 that a number of passengers began badgering him immediately upon boarding, and shining a flashlight at his rearview mirror in an effort to blind him.
The group of Israelis sat right behind Jamal and began shouting and cursing at him, the 26-year-old East Jerusalem resident said.
Police in a statement said the Israelis, aged 19 to 21, were drunk at the time of the incident.
“I then called my supervisor and told him that some people were interfering with the ride, and that I was therefore going to park at a lot outside the entrance of Kiryat Arba,” Jamal told Channel 10.
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The driver said he attempted to get off the bus, but was blocked by one of the disruptive passengers.
“When I asked him to move, he punched me in the head with some sort of sharp tool,” he recalled.
Jamal was lightly injured and taken to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment.
In a statement, police vowed that violence directed at service providers would be met with “zero tolerance” and said their investigation into the early morning incident was ongoing.
In August, police arrested a pair of teenagers from the Bat Ayin settlement south of Jerusalem suspected of assaulting Israeli Arab bus drivers over the past several months.
The suspects were caught in the middle of another assault, while attempting to spray a driver with pepper spray, police said in a statement at the time.
A statement at the time from Honenu, a right-wing legal aid organization defending the suspects, referred to the sting operation that led to their arrests as a “provocation.” Honenu said that three Israeli buses had been parked in the middle of the settlement for an extended period of time in an attempt to draw out the suspects while detectives sat inside, dressed in civilian clothing.
One of the teenagers was indicted on assault charges.
The Times of Israel Community.