Tensions flare between Jewsish and Palestinian settlers

Israeli city braced for further rioting

Toni O'Loughlin in Jerusalem

The northern Israeli city of Acre is braced for another outbreak of rioting between Jewish and Arab residents after police arrested three more people in connection with recent disturbances.
Seventy-eight people have been arrested since rioting began more than a week ago on Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day. While the mobs have dispersed, tensions remain amid fears that violence could erupt again next week after the end of the seven-day festival of Sukkot, which follows Yom Kippur.
Hostilities have marred Jewish festivals in Acre in the past and 1,000 officers have been deployed over the weekend.
The fighting began when Tawfik Jamal, an Arab Israeli, drove into Burla, a poor neighbourhood of Jews and Arabs, after the start of Yom Kippur's stringent fast, which also includes a prohibition on driving and smoking. Jewish youths attacked the car, and Jamal fled with his son and his friends into the home of a relative and called the police.
Hundreds of Arab residents, many of them masked, then took to the streets, smashing windows of Jewish shops, attacking cars and stoning Jewish homes as false rumours spread of Jamal's death.
By the end of Yom Kippur the following day, thousands of Jewish residents had begun torching and vandalising property, as well as throwing stones at Arabs.
Israeli police said Jewish instigators were the "dominant elements" in the rioting, but around half of those arrested were Arabs, including Jamal. His driving licence has been revoked for a month and he was placed under house arrest for "hurting religious sentiments".
Twenty Arab families were also evacuated and only returned to their homes at the end of this week.
Adalah, a legal centre for Arab rights, said the tensions between the Jewish and Arab residents had been festering ever since Jewish settlers established a religious school in the city in 2002.