Israel: Palestinian 'who threw stone' given 10 year sentence in attack on Jewish man

A Palestinian citizen of Israel was handed a 10-year jail sentence by an Israeli court on Monday for an attack on a Jewish man in May last year.

Relatives of Adham Bashir, the convicted attacker, have expressed concerns about the proportionality of the sentence.

The court also gave Bashir 18 months to three years of probation and ruled that he must give the victim 150,000 shekels ($44,000), Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

Relatives of Bashir said the sentence was excessive and they intended to ask defence lawyers to appeal his case.

The attack in Acre, a city in northern Israel, was said to have had "nationalist motives", Haaretz reported.

It occurred amid intercommunal violence between Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel that occurred in May 2021 as Israel brutally bombed the Gaza Strip and attacked worshippers at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

But almost 90 percent of the 600 people indicted for crimes allegedly carried out during this time were Palestinian citizens of Israel, according to State Prosecutor's Office figures from May this year.

In response to the communal violence, Human Rights Watch said in December last year: "At times the police appeared to react half-heartedly and unevenly to violence against Palestinian citizens of Israel committed by Jewish ultra-nationalists.

"Public statements by senior Israeli officials appeared to encourage discriminatory responses by authorities and the judiciary."

The indictment concerning Bashir said he was with dozens of young Palestinians who had weapons, including iron bars, at an intersection in Acre last May. 

Bashir and the rest of the group reportedly attacked a car driven by the Jewish man with stones, breaking the car's back windows. The driver is subsequently said to have lost control of his vehicle, which hit a Palestinian and then piled into a wall. He was repeatedly assaulted when trying to leave his car and flee, and the vehicle was set ablaze. 

The victim was later sent to a hospital for treatment, and his injuries included a broken nose and teeth, and he reportedly spent weeks in a wheelchair. 

Bashir, 25, pleaded guilty to offences including "infliction of severe injury under aggravated circumstances as a terrorist act", Haaretz said.

He told local radio he wasn't at the location when the attack started.

"There was a mess in many locations… I threw a stone, I may have been wrong, but you don't hand down a 10-year sentence for an incident of this type," he said.

"I did not murder, and I did not commit such a serious crime. It is quite clear that there is a political statement here against anyone who came out and demonstrated in May."

Israeli prosecutors lodged charges against eight people from Acre in connection with the attack, including Bashir.

Another of the eight has been given a year in jail for rioting while proceedings are yet to conclude for the remaining six.