Two cars were set on fire overnight Tuesday in the village of Iksal, near the city of Nazareth in northern Israel, in what authorities are investigating as a "price-tag" hate crime by Jewish extremists.
"Price tag" is the name given to acts of vandalism and violence by radical Jewish settlers against the Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria and against Israeli Arabs in mixed cities.
A wall near the burned cars was also defaced with graffiti that read: "Jews, come on – we'll win."
The Northern District Fire and Rescue Services said that early Wednesday morning, it had received an alert about a car on fire between Iksal and the neighboring village of Daburiya.
A team of firefighters was dispatched to the scene, and upon arrival discovered that two vehicles were burning. The firefighters extinguished the flames and an arson investigator was called to the scene determine the cause of the fires.
Police officers called to the scene proceeded to collect evidence and conduct sweeps in an attempt to locate suspects to bring in for questioning.
This marks the third suspected price-tag attack this month.
A week ago, unidentified suspects sprayed hate graffiti on a wall and punctured car tires in the Arab villages As-Sawiya and Luban e-Sharkiya, near the settlement Eli. The graffiti included a message that read, "Deport or kill," referring to Arabs.
Three days prior to the attack near Eli, the door of the Saada mosque in the village of Aqraba, near Nablus, was set on fire and the building was defaced with racist graffiti.
The Coalition Against Racism in Israel said in response to Tuesday's incident that "price-tag attacks have been spreading, and recently there have been a number of incidents, particularly in the West Bank. There is no doubt that the police aren't doing enough. There have been no reports of arrests and the issue apparently isn't being taken seriously.
"The police's defective handling [of these cases] unfortunately gives legitimacy to the incidents and that is what leads them to spread to Arab villages inside Israel," the group said.
