Thursday, November 01 2007 @ 05:59 PM PDT
Contributed by: Anonymous
 
JERUSALEM (AP) — Anger over a cellular phone antenna ignited violence in an ordinarily quiet Arab town in Israel's north early Tuesday, with hundreds of rioters pelting police on an arrest raid with rocks, police said. Nearly two dozen people were wounded, two of them seriously.

Police clash with rioters in Israeli-Arab town

October 30, 2007

JERUSALEM (AP) — Anger over a cellular phone antenna ignited violence in an ordinarily quiet Arab town in Israel's north early Tuesday, with hundreds of rioters pelting police on an arrest raid with rocks, police said. Nearly two dozen people were wounded, two of them seriously.

Clashes broke out at 4 a.m. after a police force entered the Galilee town of Pekiin to arrest residents suspected of vandalizing a cellular antenna over the weekend, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Pekiin's residents include Druse and Christian Arabs, as well as a few Jewish families.

Hundreds of rioters surrounded the policemen and hurled rocks at them, seriously wounding one officer, Rosenfeld said.

Thirteen officers and three medics were wounded in the violence, most of them lightly, said rescue official Eli Metzner. One resident was shot and seriously wounded, and several others were less seriously injured, he said.

Rosenfeld would not confirm that police opened fire on rioters, and would not specify what weapons were used to disperse the crowd.

Rioters also set fire to the house of one of the few Jewish families who live near an ancient synagogue in the town, he said. But Rosenfeld said the riot was not related to any ethnic tensions.

"The community lives together quietly, and these types of incidents do not normally take place," Rosenfeld said.

Police pulled out of the town several hours after the incident began in coordination with Pekiin's community leaders, and by midmorning the disturbance appeared to be over, he said.

Many Israelis have become concerned in recent years about a rapid proliferation of cellular antennas, because of fears that radiation from the antennas causes cancer. Those suspicions have never been scientifically proved.

In Israel's Arab towns, those concerns have repeatedly led residents to burn and rip down antennas.

Pekiin's mayor, Hamed Kheir, said residents were furious about a cellular antenna installed on a chicken coop in New Pekiin, a nearby Jewish community. Over the weekend, young people from his town destroyed the antenna, he said.

"The problem is the antenna. For a month we've been talking with the antenna's owner to get him to take it down, because in Pekiin there are more than 100 cancer patients," he told Army Radio on Tuesday.