Israeli-Palestinian Violence Sparks Civil Unrest Across Israel

Arab and Jewish Israelis lashed out at each other in riots that shook Israel overnight Wednesday, against the backdrop of conflict in and around the Old City of Jerusalem and ongoing exchanges of rocket attacks and airstrikes between Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip and Israel. Police say at least 374 people were arrested over the nighttime riots, and that dozens of people were injured, including 36 police officers. Mobs rampaged through the streets, beating people, lighting fires, and destroying property. In one incident, in Lod, about 8 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, a 33-year-old pregnant Arab Israeli woman was hit in the head, resulting in serious injuries. She was taken to nearby Assaf Harofeh Hospital, where she gave birth. A Border Police officer was shot and moderately injured in the Arab Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm. The ambulance that transported him to Emek Medical Center in the Jezreel Valley came under a hail of rocks. A Jewish mob in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market attacked an Arab man, who was stabbed and seriously wounded. In the northern coastal city of Acre, an Arab mob attacked a Jewish man with sticks and rocks, resulting in serious injuries, and a local hotel was set ablaze. Riots broke out in Acre, Bat Yam, Beersheba, Haifa, Hadera Jaffa, Jerusalem, Jisr az-Zarqa, Lod, Tiberias, Umm al-Fahm, and Wadi Ara, among other places. President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu both called on fellow citizens to take a step back from the brink of anarchy and refrain from taking the law into their own hands, with Rivlin urging citizens to “stop the madness.”