Three More Hawara Would-Be Lynch Rioters Arrested

IDF troops on Wednesday arrested three Arabs who participated in a riot last week in Hawara, north of Shechem. Rioting Arabs attacked the vehicle of an Israeli, a resident of the Jewish town of Itamar, and attempted to pull him from the vehicle and lynch him. The Israeli was forced to shoot and kill an Arab in the incident. Two Arabs were arrested in connection with the incident last week.

The incident took place on the main strip of Hawara, which is Road 60, the main north-south highway in Shomron, which is used daily by Israelis traveling between northern Shomron and the Binyamin and Yerushalayim areas. In a statement, the Shomron Regional Council said that “the Israeli was forced to open fire in order to defend himself from a murderous crowd of some 150 Arabs who were seeking to perform a ‘lynch’ and kill Israelis. The Israeli is the father of 8, a social worker whose only crime was driving home to his family from the supermarket.”

Also arrested previously in the incident was the driver of an ambulance who blocked the highway, cutting off the escape route of the Israeli, in order to enable the mob to kill him. The IDF has confiscated the ambulance, as well as a bus that was used to transport the rioters from Shechem to the site, a central square in Hawara.

Also Wednesday, a Yerushalayim court imposed a jail sentence of eight years on an Arab from Shuafat who planned to carry out terror attacks in the city. The 22- year-old was convicted of acquiring supplies for the construction of explosives, and for conspiring to use them in terror attacks. He was also convicted of attempted murder for encouraging a 13-year-old Arab youth to carry out a stabbing attack in the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood of the city. The suspect groomed the would-be stabber and gave him a knife, but at the last moment the youth balked, fearing his parents’ home would be torn down.