A statement from the police body specified that three policemen were slightly injured during the incident.

According to the account, the attacker, identified as Naim Badir, called the police to the parking area of a building after claiming that he saw a violent act and opened fire on them, then got into a car and tried to run them over.

The central district police commander, Avi Bitton, described the attack as a terrorist action, but Badir’s relatives in Kafr Qassem denied that version. “The Israeli police killed our son in cold blood, that story is false,” they pointed out, and denounced that the agents broke into the family home later and “completely destroyed it in front of the children, who were screaming, crying and terrified.”

Arab-Israelis in Israel number 1.9 million people, almost 21 percent of the total population of the country.

They are descendants of Palestinians who were not expelled from their lands after the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, although, since then they have denounced that they are treated as second-class citizens.

The incident occurred amid rising tensions in the occupied territories as a result of increased Israeli military operations and the response of Palestinian militias.

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