Catch me if you can
Catch me if you canIsrael news photo: Flash 90

The security situation is worsening on the road leading to Hebrew University's Mount Scopus (Har Hatzofim) Campus from the direction of the Arab village of Issawiya, a local resident tells Arutz Sheva.

The resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said that he drives on the road daily and that every day, between 4:00 and 6:00 PM, the road becomes a trap for Jewish drivers, who are pelted with rocks by local Muslim Arabs. He says that many vehicles are unable to avoid the rock barrages and that every day, cars are hit by rocks.

The first driver who ventures into the gauntlet in those hours becomes a victim, says the witness, while other drivers try to avoid the rocks and to turn back. Every day, he says, the people hit by rocks call the police, who arrive and attempt to restore order. However, he says, no systematic action has been taken to prevent the rock ambushes. No roadblock has been placed and no ambush has been prepared to catch the perpetrators.

The witness says that the attackers are not people who hide in ambush. Rather, they are local Arabs who live about 150 meters away from the road and do not bother to hide their faces. They take up positions next to the road and throw rocks from about 3 meters away at the passing cars.

As for the drivers' reactions, the witness says that they are usually unarmed and that the road is not considered to be one that requires a person to be armed in order to pass. "Nor is this an area that is in any kind of [international] dispute," he adds. "That is why the force that is called in to deal with the problem is the police and not soldiers."

However, he adds, even cars that carry soldiers to and from the military base next to Hebrew University experience the daily rock throwing.

He said that while attacks of this nature occurred in the past, too, they used to be relatively few and far between. In the past month, he said, the rock throwing has become a regular occurrence, and matters are getting worse.

Relations between Issawiya and its Jewish neighbors at adjoining French Hill have become so bad that even the ultra-leftist Haaretz reported in September that the matter had become an election issue in the race for mayor. Haaretz even went so far as to report that female students from Hebrew University often complain of being sexually harassed by "Palestinians." The newspaper devotes a regular column to gender issues, but normally, reports of harassment of Jewish women by Arabs are not considered politically "correct."