Victoria police have arrested a man over an alleged arson attack on a car with Hanukah decorations on it in Melbourne.

The car, with a sign reading “Happy Chanukah” on its roof, was firebombed on Christmas morning.

Detectives are expected to interview a 47-year-old Richmond man, who remains in custody, after he was arrested on Tuesday morning. No charges have been laid, police said.

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Emergency services responded to reports on Christmas Day that a car was on fire in the driveway of a property in St Kilda East, in Melbourne’s south-east.

No one was inside the car at the time, but the occupants of the house – a woman and three children – were evacuated as a precaution, police said.

The incident came less than two weeks after the alleged terror attack that targeted Jews celebrating Hanukah at Sydney’s Bondi beach and claimed 15 lives.

After the car was firebombed, Naomi Levin, chief executive of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, said “the Australian Jewish community remains on edge”.

“This is a continuation of the daily fear the Jewish community has had to live in for the past two years, and even more so after Bondi,” Levin said at the time.

After the alleged arson attack, the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, said in a statement posted online that she had been briefed by police about what “the community rightly fear is an antisemitic incident”.

“This is not what any family, street or community deserves to wake up to on Christmas Day in Australia,” Allan said.

“This little car has been driving around town spreading the Hanukkah and holiday cheer. I even saw one drive past when I was in Caulfield on Monday afternoon.”