14-Mar-18: Following up last week's Acco ramming attack

Ten days after the dramatic scene of an Israeli pedestrian being struck by a fast-moving late-model car and hurled high into the air ["04-Mar-18: Vehicle ramming attacks, two of them, in Israeli Arab Akko"], some details of who's responsible started emerging today.

A Times of Israel report this afternoon (Wednesday) says

• Four persons were injured in what it terms "a car-ramming attack" in Acre, northern Israel. They are a pair of IDF soldiers, a Border Guard service person and a civilian,
• The Israel Police view is, to use the term they frequently deploy, that the attack was "nationalistically motivated". In plain language, this means terrorism.
• The suspect is a 26 year-old male from Sh'faram, an Israeli Arab. 
• He was remanded in custody today. There will be no change in that status till March 21. Presumably another hearing will take place that day.
• Counsel representing the accused denies that his client is a terrorist or that his motivations were "nationalistic"
• "The court has placed a gag order on all other details pertaining to the case." This has been the case since the day of the attack. The court hasn't given any explanation.

At Ynet, they add that the accused was not present in the Haifa Magistrates Court today. The remand was extended in absentia, as he remains hospitalized. As we noted last week, he was hit by several bullets when Israel security personnel stopped him.

Not that this necessarily means a thing, but Hamas claimed credit last week for what it called the “brave and heroic” ramming, describing it as "continuing the resistance against the crimes of the occupation".