Police arrested 15-year-old Arab twins on Thursday for allegedly setting fire to a synagogue in the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Lod. The two will face a court hearing Friday.
Worshipers arrived at the Adat Moshe V'Yisrael synagogue in Lod on Wednesday morning and realized that the building had been the target of a firebomb attack. The attack caused damage to the prayer hall and to several chairs. The fire went out on its own before it could cause further damage.
The same synagogue had been targeted weeks earlier. In the first attack, vandals sprayed insults on the building's walls.
The twins' attorney said his clients had nothing to do with the attack. At the time that the synagogue was bombed one of the two was in school while the other was at work, he said.
The attack on the synagogue was one of many attacks on Jewish-owned homes and businesses in mixed cities in recent weeks. Tensions first flared on Yom Kippur, when riots broke out in the city of Akko (Acre) following an altercation between an Arab driver and local Jews.
The incident led to an attack on local Jews by a mob of angry Arabs and culminated in several days of race riots in which dozens of Jewish and Arab-owned homes, businesses and cars were damaged and several unarmed Jews, including one baby, were attacked and injured. Tensions spread as dozens of Arabs held vocal protests throughout northern Israel, waving Palestinian Authority flags and shouting slogans supporting violence against Jews.
While Jewish and Arab community leaders in Akko have since called for calm, attacks have continued, particularly in mixed cities such as Ramle and Lod, where attacks were frequent prior to the Akko riots as well.