Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said Thursday that he was personally monitoring attempts to find a young boy who was abducted this week from the Israeli Arab city of Qalansuwa in central Israel.
Overnight Wednesday, the Israel Police arrested three men aged 26, 27, and 41 from the Israeli city of Lod on suspicion that they might be involved in the kidnapping of 7-year-old Kareem Jamhur, whom the police believe is being held by Palestinians in Ramallah.
The Palestinian police say they have no leads.
Joint Arab List MK Ahmad Tibi has reached out to the Palestinian police – who say they have no leads on where the boy might be – and asked them to step up their search for Jamhur in the Ramallah area. Tibi also contacted Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, telling him that the kidnapping "crossed a line."
On Wednesday, the police released security camera footage showing Jamhur being snatched. The boy and a friend are seen approaching a car. Within seconds, a masked man emerges and forces Jamhur into the vehicle, and his friend runs off, frightened.
Additional eyewitnesses told police the car had fled northward.
An investigation of the abduction discovered that Jamhur was most likely taken over a debt of several thousand shekels owed by his father to the family of his estranged wife.
The child's father, Jabar, said he had paid his debt.
"There might be some misunderstanding, but there is no debt. I'm begging the kidnappers to return my son," he said.
He later told police the kidnappers contacted him and demanded a 4-million shekel ($1 million) ransom for the boy's safe return.
Qalansuwa Mayor Abdulbast Salameh expressed his outrage at the crime against a young resident of his town.
"This is a new height of crime in Arab society, and a new height of apathy in Israeli society and apparently among the police, as well," Salameh said.
