At the start of the weekly Israeli Cabinet meeting Oct. 11, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he had instructed Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to launch a criminal investigation of Joint List Knesset member Haneen Zoabi, whom he accused of incitement to target Israeli citizens. Netanyahu even recited what Zoabi had said to the Hamas-affiliated newspaper Alresalah: “Hundreds of thousands of worshipers should go up to Al-Aqsa in order to face down an Israeli plot for the blood of East Jerusalem residents. Today there are actions only by individuals, and what is needed is popular support. If only individual attacks continue without popular support, they will sputter out within a few days. Therefore the outpouring of thousands of our people will make these events a real intifada.”
At the same meeting, a senior Shin Bet official contradicted the allegations leveled by Netanyahu and his ministers who at the onset of the recent wave of terrorism blamed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for it and accused him of incitement as well. In his security overview to the ministers, the official asserted that the Palestinian president was in fact trying to calm the atmosphere and that he had instructed his security forces to curb the wave of violence.