Seven cars in the Arab neighborhood of Shuafat in east Jerusalem were vandalized
overnight on Monday in a suspected far-right attack.
The vandals slashed
tires and spray-painted the word “Ulpana” – the name of the West Bank outpost,
part of which is slated for demolition – on one of the cars.
It was the
second suspected politically motivated hate crime against property linked to the
Ulpana outpost in recent days.
Such attacks peak after the state
dismantles illegal outposts, and police are preparing for the possibility of
many more incidents following the demolition of buildings in Ulpana, expected in
the coming weeks.
A national police taskforce set up to coordinate action
against suspects and gather intelligence is working out of police headquarters
in Jerusalem.
While individual police districts investigate each incident
in their areas, the national taskforce, which is a part of the elite Lahav
police unit, has access to special resources, and works with other security
forces to coordinate efforts.
Police view the vandalism as serious
disturbances, and dispatch members of the Lahav taskforce to each incident to
gather forensic materials and put together an intelligence picture.
The
unit operates under the police’s Investigations and Intelligence Branch, which
is headed by Cmdr. Yoav Seglovitch.
“We are not just responding to
these incidents. We are also preventing them, by stepping up patrols in areas
such as Judea and Samaria,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Early
on Friday morning, residents of the Neveh Shalom, a village inhabited jointly by
Jews and Arabs near Beit Shemesh, awoke to find that suspected right-wing
extremists had slashed the tires of 14 cars and spray-painted anti-Arab messages
on the elementary school, public buildings and three cars.
The vandals
wrote “Revenge,” “Regards from Ulpana,” “Death to Arabs” and “Kahane was right.”