Lod Mayor Says 400 Families Left City Since Riots

The mayor of Lod Mayor Yair Revivo said on Monday that an estimated 400 families have left the city since the Arab riots that erupted there during the Gaza fighting in May, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Rioters set fire to dozens of cars, shuls were vandalized and set ablaze, and rocks thrown at Jewish residents. Jewish vigilantes responded with retaliatory attacks on Arab residents and property. A Jewish resident allegedly shot and killed an Arab resident who was part of a mob on its way to a Jewish neighborhood.

One Israeli resident, Yigal Yehoshua Hy”d, died of injuries inflicted by rioters.

The police, caught off guard by the scale of the disorders, were initially unable to stem the violence, and Jewish residents expressed their dissatisfaction with their failure to protect them and restore order. Subsequently, a state of emergency was declared, and additional security forces were sent in to reinforce the local police.

Rioting soon spread to other mixed Arab-Jewish cities, including Haifa, Ramle and Akko.

Revivo described the situation to a meeting of the Land of Israel Knesset caucus, a right-wing forum of MKs.

“We are still in post-trauma. Maybe you heard that there is some kind of quiet but we experienced a traumatic incident two months ago,” said Revivo.

He urged that mixed cities be given “national priority” for development, in order to encourage people to move to them.

Lod, which is nine miles southeast of Tel Aviv, has a population of about 77,000.