Police urge Jewish drivers to stay out of Arab villages
Advisory comes amid surge in violent protests across Galilee; police find body near Nazareth, but believe death is criminal rather than nationalistic
As violent protests raged across the country for a fourth consecutive day, the Israel Police issued a statement to Jewish drivers Tuesday urging them not to pass through the Galilean villages of Kafr Kanna and Turan, as well as other Arab Israeli communities in the lower Galilee.
The police recommendation came several hours after an Israeli man suffered minor injuries when his car was struck by a rock near Turan, and amid riots which have erupted sporadically in Kafr Kanna in the wake of the shooting death late Friday of 22-year-old Kheir Hamdan by police. Hamdan had attacked a police cruiser with a knife but was shot while he apparently attempted to flee the scene.
Police said intelligence reports indicated that assailants planned to target Jews in the area of Kafr Kanna and Turan, according to Channel 10 news. However, police stressed that no overarching directives were placed against driving through Arab Israeli towns in general.
The ongoing violence showed no sign of dying down Tuesday, as dozens of protesters clashed with police in several Arab Israeli towns across the country’s north. In Shfaram, masked demonstrators hurled stones at a police car, causing slight damage to the vehicle. No injuries were reported in the incident and police were searching the area for the perpetrator of the attack.
In the Arab Israeli village of Ibillin, rioters threw sticks and Molotov cocktails at a Border Police unit that was stationed in the area. Police arrested two men during the protest, Channel 10 reported.
In Jerusalem’s Old City, police arrested a 17-year-old Palestinian who had attempted to hide a butcher’s knife beneath his clothes. Police took the teen in for questioning, and shared a photo of the knife on Twitter.
Police briefly raised the possibility of a new nationalistic attack when they announced that the body of a man in his forties was found with signs of violence beneath an abandoned pickup truck on the road outside Nazareth. But they later said the death of the man, identified as Fuad Halaf of the Arab town of Muqeibla, was more likely to be criminal in nature.
Israel’s security cabinet convened Tuesday evening in Jerusalem to discuss the deteriorating security situation as beefed up police and security forces were dispatched to major cities and across the West Bank in a bid to restore quiet after several days of unrest and a wave of violent attacks, including fatal stabbings in Tel Aviv and Gush Etzion. There were no immediate reports of details from the meeting.
According to Channel 2 news, the IDF assigned 2,000 additional fighters to secure Jewish settlements in the West Bank. IDF soldiers were reportedly stationed every few hundred meters along Route 60, the major north-south artery running through the West Bank.
On Tuesday afternoon, one Palestinian was killed and another was seriously injured by Israeli fire as riots broke out near Hebron. The army shot and killed Imad Jawabreh, 22, near the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Arroub north of Hebron. The army said soldiers opened fire at Jawabreh when he “aimed at them with an improvised weapon.”
The incident took place on a main road from Jerusalem to Hebron as some 200 Palestinians clashed with troops, the army said. Jawabreh was taken to the hospital in critical condition but died from bullet wounds to his chest, medics said.
In separate clashes south of Hebron, near the village of Dura and the Israeli settlement of Negohot, a Palestinian man was shot by Israeli forces and evacuated to a hospital in serious condition.
The clashes erupted when about 150 Palestinian demonstrators began throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers and vehicles.
The IDF said it opened fire on the demonstrators after earlier attempts to disperse the crowd using tear gas and rubber bullets had failed.
Tuesday morning also saw a number of anti-Arab attacks, likely as revenge for the two fatal stabbing attacks on Jews a day earlier.
The Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported that dozens of cars in the West Bank town of Hawara had their windows smashed Tuesday during a settler rally.
Earlier Tuesday, police launched an investigation into a suspected “price tag” attack in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Beit Safafa, hours after an Arab cab driver was attacked by suspected Jewish extremists.
AP and AFP contributed to this report