Tuesday, September 8, 2026, 17:02 Earlier this week on the 531 bus near the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem, an Arab public-transport inspector confronted several passengers, punched one of them in the face, and sprayed tear gas/pepper spray inside the closed bus. About 15 passengers were hurt, and MDA teams transported several of them to the hospital. One passenger recorded a video of the incident (see below). Honenu Attorney Chaim Bleicher is representing some of the injured passengers. He sent an urgent letter to the police station demanding that the inspector be arrested and prosecuted.
In his letter, Attorney Bleicher described what happened: “The inspector, an Arab and an employee of a public [bus] company who deals with passengers, launched a barrage of curses and humiliating insults at a helpless passenger whose mental disability was obvious to everyone. When other passengers tried to protect the man and one filmed the scene, the inspector cursed them as well, made highly obscene gestures, and then turned to severe physical violence. He punched a passenger named Alon in the face, smashed his glasses, and left him bleeding and injured.
“One passenger held the inspector to stop the attack. The inspector then pulled out a high-strength tear-gas or pepper-spray canister and aimed it directly at passengers’ faces and eyes, spraying a large amount of the burning chemical inside a closed, crowded space.
“Our client’s infant son, only about five months old, was on the bus. After the confined space filled with gas, the baby choked, his face turned completely red, he cried, and his breathing was severely distressed. He still suffers from anxiety. Our client and her husband suffered severe chemical burns to their eyes and to the skin of their face, neck, and hands. Our client also had an intense panic attack at the scene due to the clear danger to her baby’s life. Other passengers, among them children, also suffered from the spray and required treatment. Some were taken to the hospital. Fifteen people were injured as a result of the inspector’s actions.”
Attorney Bleicher concluded by demanding an investigation and the inspector’s arrest: “An incident in which a public-transport inspector punches passengers and sprays them with gas while the bus driver locks the passengers inside a suffocating environment, is civilian terror and cannot be treated as routine. We ask that a thorough investigation be undertaken, that the suspected inspector be held until the end of legal proceedings, and that he be charged with the violent assault of multiple people causing injury, under the aggravated circumstance of using gas.”
The tear-gas incident on the bus; Video courtesy of the videographer