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Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir is responsible for the ongoing riots in Judeo-Arab towns, Israeli TV reported Thursday.
During a briefing, Shabtai said that whenever police appear to be checking an area, Ben Gvir, the Kahanist member of the religious Zionism party, shows up to fan the flames, News Channels 12 and 13 reported.
The person responsible for this Intifada is Itamar Ben Gvir. It started with Lehava’s protest at the Damascus Gate, Shabtai said, referring to far-right protests around Jerusalem’s Old City. It continued with provocations to Sheikh Jarrah, and now he is moving with activists from Lehava.
Lehava opposes assimilation and intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, as well as LGBT rights, and tries to stifle all public activity of non-Jews in Israel, including coexistence events. Lawmakers from all walks of life have attempted to label it as a terrorist group.
Ben Gvir ceremoniously moved his office earlier this month to the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where there has been an international outcry over Israeli plans to evict Palestinian families and hand over homes to Jews who had proven that they were owners before 1948.
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MP Itamar Ben Gvir seen with Lehava Chairman Benzi Gopstein in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem on May 6, 2021 (Olivier Fitoussi / Flash90)
He is part of the Knesset bloc supporting Netanyahu, which worked to bring Ben Gvir into parliament by organizing a merger between Bezalel Smotrich’s religious Zionism and Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit faction. Lehava is also affiliated with Otzma Yehudit.
Police managed to calm things down in Acre yesterday, when activists showed up on a bus and caused an uproar. Police do not have the tools to deal with it, the police chief reportedly said at the meeting.
Ben Gvir responded to the news saying Shabtai should be sacked and accused the police of not using enough force to bring down the Arab riots.
According to Channel 13, Netanyahu and Public Security Minister Amir Ohana were present at the briefing but made no comment on Shabtai’s remark.
Further violence erupted Thursday night in several Judeo-Arab towns, one night after some of the worst internal unrest in years.
A man walks past burnt-out cars after a night of violence between Arab-Israeli protesters and Israeli police in the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Lod, central Israel, on Tuesday, May 11, 2021 (AP Photo / Heidi Levine )
In Lod, a central city with Jewish and Arab populations that has become an epicenter of the ethnic violence raging in the country, a Jewish paramedic was slightly injured after being shot. Reports subsequently indicated that a second Jewish man was shot dead in the city, after a nighttime curfew at 8 p.m. came into effect for the second night in a row.
Violence between the Jewish and Arab communities arose out of clashes in Jerusalem around the Muslim month of Ramadan and clashes on the Temple Mount, and peaked as Israel embarked on an escalation of clashes with groups terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
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