West Bank teen charged with 'price tag' attack

Minor allegedly set fire to Palestinian car, residence in Nabi Elias, escaped police in a high-speed car chase.

By JOANNA PARASZCZUK
Right-wing graffiti in W. Bank village of Al-Jeniya 390 (photo credit: Ayyad Hadad / BTselem)
Right-wing graffiti in W. Bank village of Al-Jeniya 390
(photo credit: Ayyad Hadad / BTselem)
The central district attorney filed an indictment in the Petah Tikva District Juvenile Court on Thursday, charging a minor from the West Bank with a “price tag” attack against Palestinian property last month.
The indictment says the defendant conspired with others to carry out the February 16 attack in Nabi Ilyas near Kalkilya, in which he set fire to a Hyundai car and a home belonging to a Palestinian man.
The defendant – who cannot be identified because he is a minor – allegedly then sprayed the words “price tag” on a wall near the scene of the attack.
Immediately afterward, the indictment says, the defendant and the others involved in the attack drove to the exit of the village where a police patrol vehicle issued a message via loudspeaker, ordering the him to pull over and stop.
A car chase ensued, as the defendant and his friends tried to escape by driving at a reckless speed, refusing to stop even though several police cars were in pursuit, the indictment said.
During their high-speed escape, the defendant allegedly threw various items from the car, including rubber gloves, a box of matches, stones and a can of spray paint.
When the defendant’s car reached a police checkpoint, the driver drove straight through, slashing its tires on security spikes placed on the road, the indictment said.
With three of the car’s tires slashed, the defendant and the others managed to drive only for several hundred meters more, before abandoning the car and fleeing on foot along the road’s hard shoulder, the indictment continued.
A police spokesman said after the attack that the police used the vehicle to track down its owner, and arrested him a day later.
The Nabi Ilyas attack was one of a string of “price tag” attacks, which have mostly targeted Palestinian property but have also targeted left-wing groups and IDF property.
Also in February, extremists vandalized Peace Now’s Jerusalem offices, spraying “No leftists, no terrorist attacks” on the fence outside of the office in the German Colony neighborhood.
Two days before that, two cars and a stone fence at the Monastery of the Cross, near the capital’s Nayot neighborhood and below the Israel Museum, were covered with anti-Christian graffiti and the cars’ tires were slashed. “Jesus, drop dead,” “Death to Christians” and “Kahane was right,” the vandals wrote. They called themselves “The Maccabees of Migron,” in a reference to the Migron outpost in the West Bank, and sprayed-painted the words “price tag.”
Vandals also attacked the Hand in Hand Center for Jewish- Arab Education elementary school in Jerusalem’s Patt neighborhood, where they spray-painted “Kahane was right” and “Death to Arabs” on the wall.
Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.