Yesterday, Sunday (October, 12) Tawfiq Jamal, the driver who entered a Jewish neighborhood in Akko on Yom Kippur igniting racist anti-Arab riots across the Israeli northern city, told the Knesset's Interior Affairs Committee on Sunday that he made a mistake. "All I wanted was to get home. A mistake happened. I want to ask for forgiveness." Jamal said he lives in the mixed Wolfson neighborhood and was one of the founders of a coexistence forum in Akko, which initiated the establishment of a community center. "We invented coexistence," he said.
His appearance before the committee sparked a row among right-wing Knesset members, led by MK Effie Eitam (National Union-National Religious Party), who interrupted the Arab driver, calling out, "Why wasn't he arrested? He came here for a show?" Hadash Chairman MK Mohammed Barakeh said that the racist riots were started by a group of radical Jews who settled in the city with the encouragement of "political elements sitting around this table". He claimed that these elements, supported by Akko Mayor Shimon Lankry, attempted to torch an Arab house several months ago while its tenants were still in it. MK Eitam, a settler in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, interrupted him, saying "you are an instigator, you should have been arrested. Your dirty mouth was the fuel of the riots."
"The thief doth fear each bush an officer. You came to celebrate the transfer of Arabs from Akko," Barakeh replied.
The dominant elements behind the riots in Akko seem to be Jewish instigators, Northern District Israel Police Commander, Major-General Shimon Koren, told the press on Sunday. "We have no intention of letting up. We know who's behind the incitement and the arson. It's a very small group of people." he added.