Israel’s Yair Golan accuses Netanyahu of neglecting Arab citizens after deadly grenade attack

Israeli opposition leader Yair Golan accused caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday of neglecting the lives of Arab citizens and leaving them at the mercy of criminal groups after a grenade attack killed a woman and injured three others in northern Israel, Anadolu reports.

“A bomb explodes in broad daylight in the village of Kafr Manda. People killed and many injured. This is what the Netanyahu government’s policy of neglect looks like,” Golan, who leads The Democrats party, wrote on US social media company X.

“Netanyahu neglected the lives of Arab citizens in Israel. When he appointed Itamar Ben-Gvir as national security minister, he handed them over to criminal organizations,” Golan said. He added that those groups had grown stronger under Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir and now posed a threat across Israel.

“We will form a government of change that takes responsibility, fights criminal organizations and restores personal security to all Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs,” he said.

Lina Qassem Zidan, 51, was shopping at a sweets shop in a busy commercial area of Kafr Manda, an Arab town in the Galilee, when a grenade was thrown at the shop, Israeli media reported. Medics took her to Rambam Hospital in Haifa in critical condition, and she was later pronounced dead. A man and a woman in their 50s were moderately injured, and another man sustained minor injuries.

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Israeli media reported that, according to an initial assessment, the attackers were looking for a specific person and threw the grenade at a shop owned by one of his relatives after failing to find him.

Zidan’s death brought the reported number of homicide victims in Israel’s Arab communities since the start of the year to 200, including 20 women, according to Israeli media. Residents of Kafr Manda said homes and businesses had been targeted in a series of shootings and grenade attacks over the past month, with no arrests announced.

On Friday, Gadi Eisenkot, who has been tasked with forming Israel’s next government, accused Netanyahu of fueling a “racist and hostile” campaign to delegitimize Arab citizens, who make up more than one-fifth of Israel’s population.

President Isaac Herzog gave Eisenkot, the leader of the Yashar party, the mandate on Nov. 8 following the Oct. 27 parliamentary elections. Lawmakers representing 67 seats in the 120-seat Knesset recommended Eisenkot, while 46 backed Netanyahu and seven United Torah Judaism lawmakers recommended neither candidate.

Eisenkot has 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14-day extension.

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