BICOM

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned “racism against Israeli Arabs and hooliganism against Palestinians” in public remarks at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday morning.

Though he did not specify which incidents he was referring to, his remarks follow a number of so-called ‘price-tag’ incidents of vandalism, which occurred on Friday. In one incident, car tires were punctured in the village of Beit Ilu, near Ramallah, with “revenge” spray-painted onto one car and “price tag, Evyatar says hello” on a nearby wall. Evyatar Borovsky, resident of the West Bank settlement Yitzhar, was stabbed to death in terror attack last month. Another car was damaged and “Maon Farm” sprayed on it, the name of a settlement outpost where an illegal structure was removed by the IDF last week. In a separate incident, anti-Christian slogans were sprayed at the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu said that such actions were, “without any provocation or justification whatsoever,” adding, “We strongly reject these phenomena and will act with all legal means at our disposal to stop them.” Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch have recently pushed for such incidents to be legally classified as acts of terrorism.

In a separate incident last week, a theme park found to be booking Arab and Jewish school groups on separate days, received widespread condemnation by Israeli ministers across the political spectrum. The park managers said they were responding to requests from both Jewish and Arab schools to segregate the bookings, but subsequently apologised for their actions.