12 Jewish-Owned Cars Vandalized in Mixed Jerusalem District

Vandals slashed the tires of 12 cars in a mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem overnight, a police spokeswoman said on Wednesday, indicating that the vehicles all belonged to Jewish Israelis.

"The tires of 12 cars belonging to Jewish citizens living in the Abu Tor neighborhood were found slashed," Luba Samri said in a statement.

Abu Tor is a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood which straddles the so-called Green Line between Israel and the territories it took in 1967, with half of it in West Jerusalem and half in the annexed eastern sector of the city.

The incident, however, targeted cars in a street in the western half of the neighborhood.

The attack resembled the vandalism associated with Jewish extremist hate crimes that usually target Arabs -- known as "price tag" attacks -- but there was no sign of graffiti often scrawled near the scene, police said.

On June 28 cars were vandalized by suspected Jewish extremists in the Arab-Israeli village of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem in an attack that evoked strong condemnation from the Israeli political establishment.

The same month, graves were desecrated in an Arab Christian cemetery in Jaffa.