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JAFFA, Israel (Ma'an) -- Christian and Muslim graves in Jaffa were vandalized overnight Friday, by assailants suspected to be Jewish extremists, local media reports and a religious official said.

The Islamic cemetery al-Kazakhana and nearby Christian Orthodox cemetery in the town were broken into at night, locals told reporters. A website called Yaffa48 posted photos of what it identified as the graves.

"Death to Arabs" and other racist slogans were daubed on graves, they said, and gravestones were smashed.

The president of the Islamic Movement in Jaffa, Sheikh Ahmad Abu Ajwa, slammed the attack which he called an attempt to blackmail Palestinian residents of Jaffa.

Arab Knesset member Ibrahim Sarsour accused Israeli authorities of failing to stop extremist attacks, the official Palestinian Authority news agency WAFA reported.

"The Israeli government was not making any effort to stop these racist attacks against Palestinians, rather it provides extremists protection," he told the site.

Abu Awja called for local officials to hold an emergency meeting to discuss recent attacks on Palestinians in Israel.

Police and Jewish Israeli officials were not available for comment during the Yom Kippur fast day.

On Sunday, a mosque in Bedouin village Tuba Zangaria in northern Israel was torched by a group of assailants, and Israeli police detained an 18-year-old in connection with the attack.

Police said they had set up a special task force to deal with the "price taggers," Reuters reported, a reference to attacks on Palestinians by Israelis, usually settlers in the West Bank, in revenge for policies they oppose.

In 2005 a Jewish couple was charged for throwing a pig's head into a Tel Aviv mosque in an attempt to derail Israel's then pullout from the Gaza Strip which went ahead in August of that year.

In January this year, the Al-Aqsa Foundation said 20 graves in the historic Mamilla cemetery in West Jerusalem were damaged by Jewish extremists.

Around 20 percent, or 1.3 million people, of Israel's population are of Palestinian origin.

They are largely the descendants of Palestinians that managed to remain during the 1948 war, when an estimated 700,000 were expelled from or fled their homes during fighting that would see the establishment of the state of Israel.

Rights groups say that Israelis of Palestinian origin face discrimination in employment, education and public funding within Israel.