The Israel Police has reported that Arab residents of Judea and Samaria are taking advantage of the unprecedented concessions for the Muslim month of Ramadan to sexually abuse Jewish women on Tel Aviv beaches, in a state of affairs that repeats itself every year.
Police have revealed that the Ramadan “gestures” granting Arabs entry permits and direct buses to pray at the Temple Mount – where the Jordanian Waqf forbids Jews from praying – have been manipulated by many to stay on in Israel and visit the coastal beaches. There, many of the Arab visitors have reportedly been harassing Jewish women.
Take the case of Ahmed Hadid, a 19-year-old resident of Hevron in Judea who was arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing two women on the Tel Aviv coast this Tuesday after having received an entry permit for Ramadan, according to the Hebrew news site Walla!.
At a discussion on extending Hadid’s detainment on Thursday, senior police investigator Sgt. Maj. Yona Hirschhorn said, “every year on the month of Ramadan we are confronted by this phenomenon.”
“Ramadan tourists who receive permits to pray work in a trip to Tel Aviv. They arrive at the Tel Aviv beaches and some of them can’t resist the sight of the female bathers, and then we get reports of sexual abuse and sexual assault,” revealed Hirschhorn.
Despite the sexual abuse and the repeating nature of the phenomenon, Judge Yaron Gat ordered to release Hadid on bail.
An officer in the Tel Aviv district police was quoted by Walla! as saying: “we are prepared with large police forces in the beach areas during this period to give a response to any incident that could develop due to the increased presence of those groups” of Arab residents of Judea and Samaria.
Speaking about the case of Hadid, he added, “the moment the girls complained about the suspect, there were officers on the beach who identified the suspect and arrested him immediately.”
Nasser Assi, an Arab resident of Shechem (Nablus) in Samaria, told the paper that “we receive the entry permit for the whole month of Ramadan. The permit is daily and we come in the morning and have to leave in the evening. Everyone goes in and exits several days during the month. It’s definitely an experience to travel in Tel Aviv and different areas.”
