Lethal Arab-on-Arab Crime

"Israel has the best security infrastructure in the world but the police can't catch some Arab teenagers with guns, inside our own country?"

"Come on. It shows exactly how much we are valued as citizens." 

Fida Sh'hade, member, Mothers for Life political lobby

"The solidarity from all these people, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, is the only thing keeping me strong right now."

"I believe in the good of people. I never expected this would happen to us ... I hope this anger will do something."

"The killing has to stop."

Aisha Hujarat, Bir al-Maksur Bedouin village, Israel

"The police don't care what happens to Palestinians so [the gangs] know they can kill children while they are playing and nothing will happen."

Imam Hujarat, Bir-alMaksur, Israel

Arab Israelis block a road as they protest against violence, organized crime and recent killings in their communities, in Tel Aviv, October 28, 2021 (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Palestinian criminal gangs in Israel have been victimizing ordinary Israeli-Palestinians increasingly over the years. Drug and loan-shark activities as well as clan and family feuds all drive criminal activity that persecute and harm those living in Palestinian-Israel communities. When violence occurs the innocent as well as those specifically targeted by gangs are murdered. And, simply put, while village heads cry out for justice and for criminals to be brought before the law, Israeli police find that cooperation from within the affected villages to aid in identifying suspects and committing arrests is often non-existent.

As well as another reality that comes into play; simply put, the priority for Israel’s security forces is the focus on Palestinian nationalistic violence in incidents of stabbing, shooting, vehicular homicide targeting Jewish Israelis. The result is that this focus is given attention above and beyond that expended on mob-linked criminality occurring within the Israeli-Palestinian community. 

Figures provided by the Aman Center, a civil society group that works to curtail violence in Israel’s Arab community, point to a record 128 Arab civilians killed in 2021 resulting from unapprehended violent crime. For 2020, 113 such homicides were recorded by the group, 96 in 2019, and in 2018 a total of 67. Clearly, a wholesale increase in violent crimes leading to deaths within the community of Arab Israelis. Most of these deaths have been among young Arab males. But children have also been killed in the cross-fire.

 

Officially, Arab crime families have been held responsible for the violence over the last few decades. Families that have acquired weapons and assumed power over their communities. It is organized crime groups that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accuses of rampaging through the Arab communities as they run 'protection rackets' and commit murder. "A state within a state has developed" he charged; that gangs have acquired "quantities of illegal weapons ... enough for a small army".

Outside the Hujarat family home in the Bedouin village of Bir al-Maksur in Israel's north near Nazareth, three-year-old  Ammar was shot and killed in a playground, hit by a stray bullet fired during a car chase. His death was the first this year of a child losing his life to the epidemic of gun violence afflicting Israel's Arab community. Death numbers rose year over year last year when a record 127 people were killed. Illegal firearms have proliferated since 2013.

The situation has become such that gang violence is responsible for more deaths from within the Israeli Palestinian community representing twenty percent of the Israeli population, than among Palestinians living in the West Bank dying as a result of run-ins with the Israeli security forces. Among the non-Jewish Israeli citizens inclusive of Bedouin and Druze along with Muslim and Christian Palestinians, full rights of citizenship are extended.

 

In Arab and mixed-ethnic neighbourhoods gun violence grimly illustrates issues of minorities where organized crime networks are embedded; people turning to mob bosses for loans. Political corruption and extortion is commonplace and the community distrusts and fears the police, believing themselves to be victims of institutional discrimination.

 

Unemployment caused by COVID has young Arab men on the streets, well-armed foot soldiers available to commit to vendettas all of which tears at the social fabric of the communities. Feuds escalate at times simply as a result of the widespread availability of black market guns. In one neighbourhood a family lost their teenage sons when members of a rival clan opened fire after an argument had begun months earlier over a parking dispute.

 

A mere 25 percent of Arab murder cases were solved last year in comparison with about 70 percent of murders of Jewish citizens. Explained by Israeli police as a reflection that homicide investigations were "fraught with challenges", including "lack of cooperation on the part of citizens". The new coalition government promised to fight crime in the Arab community, budgeting $310 million for more police stations in Arab towns and a unit dedicated to Arab community affairs.

 

Risking, of course, accusations from within those communities that Israeli police -- among whose ranks there are representatives of the Israeli-Arab community -- would be  overstepping their authority and intruding into the lives of Palestinian-Israelis