JERUSALEM: Israeli police deployed reinforcements around Muslim and Christian sites in Jaffa on Sunday after graves in the mixed port town were found to be desecrated, a police spokeswoman said.
"Police reinforcements have been deployed around the Muslim and Christian religious sites which are considered to be sensitive," spokeswoman Luba Samri said.
"The police have been ordered to prevent any provocations," she said, adding that they were in touch with Muslim and Christian officials in the Mediterranean town, which lies immediately south of Tel Aviv.
Residents had on Saturday discovered that 26 graves in two cemeteries, one Muslim and one Christian, had been daubed with anti-Arab graffiti reading "Death to Arabs" and "price tag."
Twenty-two of the defaced graves were in a Muslim cemetery and four in a nearby Christian burial site.
Although the damage was discovered on Saturday, it appeared to have been carried out "a week or so ago," Samri said, explaining it had not been discovered immediately "because there are few visitors in these old cemeteries."
In an apparent revenge attack, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a synagogue in the area on Saturday evening without causing any damage, police said.
Arab councilors in Jaffa denounced the attacks as another incident of "racist aggression," and urged people not to "react to the provocation."
"Price tag" is a term which tends to refer to acts of vengeance by extremist Jews against Palestinians or Arabs, which usually occur in the West Bank.
The attack was discovered just five days after an arson attack on a mosque in northern Israel, in which the perpetrators scrawled the words "tag" and "revenge" on the walls of the building.
Samri said the increased police presence, "particularly around Muslim holy sites", had been ordered by police chief Yohanan Danino following Monday’s attack on the mosque in Tuba Zangaria, some 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the Sea of Galilee.
Police have arrested one suspect although details of his identity are subject to a gag order. His remand in custody has been extended until October 11.
Reports in the Israeli press said he was an 18-year-old Jew from the Galilee region, who was arrested in the northern West Bank where he attends a Jewish seminary in the hardline settlement of Yitzhar.
He had reportedly been barred by the authorities from returning to the settlement on suspicion he was planning to attack Palestinians.
