The incident bore the hallmark of a ‘price tag’ attack – a euphemism for Jewish hate crimes against Palestinians.

The tyres of about 20 cars have been punctured and anti-Arab slogans scrawled on buildings in a Palestinian town in northern Israel, police said, in an apparent hate crime.

Police said on Thursday that the vandals in the Jezreel Valley town of Manshiya Zabda had drawn a Star of David on one of the cars and written: “Mohammad is a pig” and “Arabs enemies expel or kill” in Hebrew on nearby buildings.

The incident bore the hallmark of the type of hate crime that generally targets the property of Palestinians or Palestinian citizens of Israel in revenge for attacks against Israelis.

Police said they “denounce all nationalistic hate crimes and will use all its means and cooperation with other bodies to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice”.

Thursday’s incident comes just three days after suspected Jewish hardliners vandalised about 160 Palestinian cars in East Jerusalem.

Neither police nor Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, would say whether they thought the two crimes were linked.