An Arab Israeli man was indicted on Thursday on terrorism-related charges for throwing a firebomb at a police station in Haifa on Dec. 24, the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Israel Police said.
According to a joint statement, 20-year-old Razi Hamada, from Shfaram in the Western Galilee, attempted to torch the station in support of the Hamas terrorist group.
A few weeks earlier, he allegedly planned to set fire to the area surrounding Haifa’s oil refineries and chemical plants.
Hamada was initially arrested for driving without a valid driver’s license but later confessed to authorities.
The investigation found that Hamada, who acted alone, was motivated by the war against Hamas in Gaza and after watching anti-Israel propaganda, including Qatar’s Al Jazeera news network.
There are numerous refineries and petrochemical facilities in the Haifa Bay area, where much of Israel’s plastics are produced. In mid-January, Hezbollah terror master Hassan Nasrallah claimed Iran-backed militias in Iraq fired a cruise missile at Haifa Port.
In 2022, the Israeli government approved a plan to phase out the industrial zone for safety reasons.
On Monday, an Israeli soldier was seriously wounded in a car-ramming and stabbing terrorist attack near a naval base in Haifa.
According to reports, a car drove into the 20-year-old victim, after which the perpetrator got out and attacked him with an ax.
The terrorist was identified as Wassim Abu al-Hoga, an Arab Israeli from Tamra in the Lower Galilee. Al-Hoga had a criminal record for illegally transporting people—presumably Palestinians—into the Jewish state, the Israel Police said in a statement.
Earlier this month, 79-year-old Edna Blustein was killed and 17 other people were wounded in a combined car-ramming and stabbing attack in the central city of Ra’anana.