Six Israelis were charged Sunday in a months-long hate crime investigation, and a Palestinian was arrested in the stabbing of four Israelis on Sunday afternoon, a reminder that tensions are always bubbling under the surface, even in relatively quiet times
Two of the six are soldiers
The six, including two soldiers and a minor, were arrested in the southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva on suspicion of carrying out a series of attacks against Palestinian citizens of Israel that began in December, Israeli Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
During the investigation, police said they found knives, clubs and metal rods used during assaults motivated out of a "nationalist-racist motive" to "prevent the assimilation of Jews and Arabs in Beer Sheva."
Indictments against the group will include a terror-related charge, police said.
According to an indictment sheet, one of those arrested, Raz Ben-Shalom Amitzur, wanted to harm Palestinians who were spending time in the company of Jewish women.
His aim, the indictment said, was to create fear and panic, and prevent personal ties between Arab men and Jewish women.
In one incident in February, according to the indictment, Amitzur approached a car in Beer Sheva and concluded that a man in the vehicle was an Arab and the woman was Jewish. He pulled out a knife and stabbed the man, the indictment says.
On another occasion in March, the indictment says, he spotted an Arab man and two Jewish women in a car and, retrieving a wrench and the handle of a hammer, broke the car window and hit the Arab man on the head.
"You think you are a king," the suspect said, according to the indictment sheet. "You date Jewish girls, you stinking Arab."
Three stabbings in Tel Aviv
In Tel Aviv, a Palestinian man stabbed three Israelis on Sunday afternoon, Rosenfeld said.
The stabbings took place on HaYarkon Street, which runs along the city's boardwalk, a popular place in the busy city.
A security video shows some of the stabbings taking place inside a hotel on the street.
Rosenfeld said the victims were lightly wounded.
The suspect, an 18-year-old from the area of Nablus in the northern West Bank, was arrested at the scene.
Shin Bet, Israel's security agency, regards the attack as a terror-related incident.
The arrests and the attack are a reminder that the wave of violence that spread across Israel, Jerusalem, and the occupied West Bank in late 2015, though much receded, has not completely abated.