"This is the second ramming attack in the last few days," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in January 2017. "We are fighting this murderous phenomenon, which has struck both Israel and the world.” It was just hours after a huge police force evacuated the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev. During the eviction, which involved the destruction of residents’ homes and other buildings, a car belonging to a local math teacher, Yakub Abu al-Kiyan, struck  police officer Erez Amadi Levy. Abu al-Kiyan was shot by the police. No one provided Abu al-Kiyan with first aid and he bled to death on the spot.

Though the police described the incident as an intentional vehicular attack, the circumstances behind it were controversial from the beginning. Former Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh and former Minister of Internal Security Gilad Erdan immediately identified it as a terror attack. They claimed that there was evidence that Abu al-Kiyan had identified with the Islamic State. The prime minister later joined the chorus, repeating that it was an intentional attack. Others, however, argued that Abu al-Kiyan had been shot by police, lost control of his car and hit the officer as a result. The incident was investigated by the police's department of internal affairs. The Shin Bet determined that it was an operational failure by the police and not a terrorist attack. Nevertheless, former State Attorney Shai Nitzan closed the case without conclusively determining whether it was an attack after all.

On Sep. 8, three years after the incident, the prime minister finally apologized to Yakub al-Kiyan’s family for turning him from a victim of police violence into a terrorist. Netanyahu took advantage of the opportunity to lash out at the Israeli police and the state attorney’s office, claiming, “Senior officials in the state attorney’s office and police turned him into a terrorist to protect themselves and hurt me.”

Netanyahu’s statement came a day after political commentator for N12 News Amit Segal published a leaked letter from the former state attorney to the police indicating that his office did not want to prosecute the police in the Umm al-Hiran case because it could provide ammunition to those who wish to undermine law enforcement. He also wrote, "The police commissioner indeed acted scandalously here, but there are national interests that must be taken into account.”