2 suspected hate crimes against Palestinians in 1 day
Tires of vehicles belonging to residents of West Bank town of Rammun punctured, while cars themselves spray-painted with malicious graffiti reading, 'Let us deal with them'; north of Jerusalem, houses sprayed with graffiti reading 'revenge.'
Cars belonging to Palestinians in two separate West Bank towns were spray painted with malicious graffiti and had their tires slashed overnight Sunday in what appear to be hate crimes.
In the Palestinian town of Rammun in the central West Bank, graffiti, in Hebrew, read: "We'll take our fate into our own hands" and "Let us deal with them." Palestinian residents of the village reported the incident to the police in the early hours of the morning.
Meanwhile, in the Palestinian village of Beit Iksa, tires were slashed and homes were spray-painted, with the graffiti reading "administrative revenge."
A string of hate-related incidents have aroused the IDF’s attention in the West Bank in recent weeks.
In the early hours of Friday morning, two suspects were caught on CCTV cameras slashing the tires of vans in the village of Burqa, spraying them with slogans such as, "God is the king," "Stop the administrative orders" and "Here live terror supporters to be expelled and killed."
Earlier this month, two assailants were captured on security camera setting fire to the front door of a mosque near Nablus.
In the CCTV footage, recorded directly above the door, the arsonists could be seen approaching the entrance of the mosque in the village of Kfar Aqraba, and covering it with flammable substances before igniting the flames by throwing a match.
The IDF and police have issued repeated warnings in recent weeks against acts of violence and vandalism carried out by Israeli right-wing extremists, which risks sparking an escalation in violence in the West Bank as Israel faces a volatile Gaza border.
While by April 2017 the security forces recorded eight instances of hate crime, more than a dozen have already taken place this year, which have included nationalistically-motivated attacks on Palestinian property.
According to the Shin Bet, 63 administrative restriction orders were issued last year against extremist right-wing activists, while 13 have been issued so far in 2018.
The Shin Bet statistics also show that this year five terror attacks have been carried out against Palestinians, which were believed to have been committed by Jewish extremists, while only two were carried out throughout the entire last year.
