One of the youths was injured in the incident and was transferred to Beilinson Medical Center. Security forces searched for the boys for hours before finding them hiding near the settlement of Yitzhar, according to the right-wing legal NGO Honenu.
The Israel Police announced on Thursday morning that it had received a report of a stone factory in the area near Hawara being targeted by arson overnight. The police report added that the suspects in the arson were attacked by local residents as they tried to escape from the scene.Police officers and IDF soldiers who arrived at the scene arrested one of the suspects who was injured by a local resident and transferred him for medical treatment.
"The boys were shocked to hear this morning that the mob that attacked them tried to murder them and lynched them, [a story] made up this morning as if they were tied to a price tag," said the father of one of the boys, according to Honenu. The two youths who weren't injured in the incident arrived at the police station in Ariel on Thursday with their parents in order to file a complaint against the rioters who attacked them.
Honenu announced that the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) arrested the youth who was hospitalized and forbade him from meeting with an attorney.
"The boy is wounded and bruised from a severe lynching performed on him by Arabs," said attorney Adi Kedar. "Instead of the Shin Bet forces now going door to door in Hawara and nearby villages, arresting the Arab crowd that tried to murder Jews tonight, they went to the hospital to arrest the wounded boy and forbade him to meet with a lawyer: There are no words."We have a serious concern for his medical condition, the nature of his injuries is severe, and taking him in the middle of medical treatment from the hospital is very, very disturbing," Kedar said.