On election day, a former employee of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office provided allegedly fabricated intelligence that led the police to raid the homes of three Ream activists in southern Israel without search warrants, resulting in the arrest of Dr. Seif Abu Rias and two others.
The operation coincided with a phone call by Netanyahu's aide, Ido Nordan, to the office of the police headquarters, when Shin Bet chief David Zini also sought to tap Arab members of the Knesset, and the arrests were used to fuel Netanyahu's "The Arabs are stealing the elections" campaign.
Regarding the arrest of Dr. Saif Abu Riaz, the police later admitted that no evidence was found and the case remains under investigation.