About 200 enraged Jewish settlers from the West Bank rampaged through the East Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Eizariya on Monday night, beating up residents and smashing windows.
The settlers, from Ma’aleh Adumim, were avenging a gasoline bomb attack on an Egged bus bound for their town earlier that evening.
The incident was the second this month in which Jewish settlers took the law into their own hands because of what they have called the “ineptitude of the security forces.”
Although large concentrations of police and Israel Defense Force troops were at the scene, their purpose apparently was to try to calm the rioting settlers.
Only two Ma’aleh Adumim residents were detained.
But Police Inspector-General Ya’acov Terner told the Knesset’s Interior Committee on Tuesday that the police will not stand by idly in such circumstances and allow citizens to take over law enforcement.
Meanwhile, Samih Abu-Sheikh, a 14-year-old Arab boy from Kalkilya, died Monday at Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikvah.
He was the victim of gunshot wounds, apparently inflicted by a Jewish motorist whose car was stoned while passing through the West Bank town Sunday. No arrests have been made.
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