Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday condemned the "anarchy" of Jewish-Arab violence in cities across the country after a day of tumultuous unrest, while President Reuven Rivlin warned of a civil war between the country's Arabs and Jews.
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Violent confrontations erupted in Lod, Acre, Jerusalem, Haifa, Bat Yam, Tiberias and many other locations, with multiple people injured, some of them seriously, leading Netanyahu to announce he was considering deploying the IDF inside towns to restore order.
More than 400 people were arrested.
Perhaps the most shocking scene of the night, and one that elicited expressions of disbelief and horror from Israeli leaders, was footage of hundreds of Jewish extremists in Bat Yam vandalizing Arab property and then assaulting an Arab driver in his car, dragging him out of the vehicle and beating him savagely.
Senior MDA medic Firas Reis said: "We were near the area when we saw the wounded man lying unconscious and suffering from a bleeding head injury. We immediately began life-saving medical treatment that included bandaging and breath support and evacuated him in stable condition for further treatment at the hospital."
In Jerusalem, an Arab was stabbed by Jews and seriously injured at the Mahane Yehuda market on Wednesday.
"Death to Arabs" was chanted in many locations of Jewish rallies.
Meanwhile, in Acre, a Jewish man was also assaulted by Arab rioters and hit with rocks and iron bars, and was hospitalized in critical condition.
In Tamra, a Jewish man was stabbed and assaulted by an Arab mob, with an Arab paramedic saying the attackers almost burned the man inside his car before he helped evacuate him to safety.
In an incident in Haifa, an Arab driver found himself in the midst of a mob chanting "Death to Arabs." As he was pelted with stones, the driver turned the vehicle around to escape but hit one of the rioters, 26, causing him moderate injuries. The driver, 20, sped away but was later detained by police.
The broadcast on Channel 12 News on Wednesday night cut to a phoned-in appeal by Rivlin to "please stop this madness."
"We are endangered by rockets that are being launched at our citizens and streets, and we are busying ourselves with a senseless civil war among ourselves," said the president.
The president also launched a scathing attack on Arab leaders within the country for their inaction.
"The silence of the Arab leadership about these disturbances is shameful, giving support to terrorism and rioting and encouraging the rupture of the society in which we live and in which we will continue to live once all this has passed," he said in a statement.
Netanyahu visited Lod and Acre and said that "nothing justifies" Jews attacking Arabs or Arabs attacking Jews.
"It doesn't matter to me that your blood is boiling. You can't take the law into your own hands," he said.
Netanyahu also decried the "anarchy" of Arabs rioters "setting synagogues alight, setting cars alight, assaulting police, attacking peaceful innocent civilians. We can't accept it."
Despite large police mobilization under a state of emergency and a nighttime curfew, Lod was again the scene of street battles between Jewish and Arab mobs Wednesday night. Shortly after Netanyahu spoke, the police reported two people injured in a shooting there. A synagogue and cars were torched in the city.
According to Channel 12 News, the Border Police will deploy 10 companies – some 1,000 officers – to keep the peace in the cities affected.
Yamina chairman Naftali Bennett called the scenes in Bat Yam "un-Jewish, immoral, inhuman." His number two, Ayelet Shaked, decried the "moral bankruptcy" of such an attack.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz called the Jewish-Arab violence "no less dangerous than the Hamas rockets."
Gantz, who signed off on the order to deploy Border Police troops to cities, stressed that IDF soldiers will not be involved in civilian policing operations.
"We must not win the Gaza battle and lose at home," he said.
Joint Arab List chairman Ayman Odeh and Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas both condemned the violence on Arabic-language radio, while asking Arabs not to leave their homes so as not to be attacked by Jewish mobs.
The two Arab Israeli political leaders also stressed the need for Arab youth not to respond with violence against people or property.
"The madness must be stopped," Odeh said.
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