OCUUPIED JERUSALEM —
Arab communities in Israel suffer from
an unprecedented level of violent crimes. Last year was one of the deadliest
and bloodiest in recent memory in Arab communities and mixed towns in Israel,
with 128 people killed.
اضافة اعلان
The upsurge in violence is raising major concerns among a
minority that has long complained of institutionalized discrimination.
Palestinians in Israel represent about a fifth of the
population, but in recent years, most murders in the country occurred among
them. They say police is not doing enough to combat what has become a deadly
plague.
According to a recent report by the
Aman Center, the Israeli
police managed to solve only 29 percent of murders among Arabs this year,
compared to 71 percent among the Jewish population.
Police did not confirm the numbers, but officials insist
that they are doing all they can to put an end to the crime spree.
Last October, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced that
he had ordered two units of the Border Police to relocate to southern Israel
“in order to help fight crime in Arab communities”.
“We are losing the country,” Bennett said at a Cabinet
meeting that dealt with crime in Arab communities last October.
Reda Jaber, a director at Aman Center, The Arab Center for
Safe Society, in Tayebi, Israel, told
Jordan News that the spike in crime and
violence is part of decades of systemic discrimination in housing, job
opportunities and education.
“The state did not deal with poverty, unemployment, lack of
frameworks for young men and women in distress, the black market, the absence
of any local economic components, as well as the development of the cultural
life of the community,” said Jaber.
Arabs make up 20 percent of Israel’s population of nine
million, and they are Arab descendants of the Palestinians who remained on
their lands after the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Reda said that the high crime rate within
Palestinian communities in Israel is mainly due to the state’s policies that have
“chronically placed the communities on the margins of the Jewish majority and
thus kept their problems without solutions”.
According to Aman, a large gap exists not only in the
percentage of solving cases, but also in the total number of murders in Arab
towns and villages. Seventy-two percent of all murders in 2021 occurred in Arab
communities, compared to 25 percent in Jewish ones.
“This means that there were 10 times more Arabs killed than
Jews in Israel last year,” said Thabet Abu Rass, co-director of the Abraham
Fund Initiatives in Israel.
In 2019, 71 percent of the 125 homicide victims in Israel
were Arabs.
Abu Rass attributed the rise in crime to several reasons,
among them the prevalence of illegal weapons in Arab towns; some put the
estimate at half a million pieces.
Abu Rass told
Jordan News that “there is lack of trust in
the government’s efforts and promises”. He warned that the continuing wave of
violent crimes in the Arab sector could lead to “civil war”.
Abu Ras also said that “the government and the Israeli
police are to blame for the exacerbation of crime and violence in the Arab
community,” and that the Israeli police is the only party that can fight this
type of crime in Arab towns and villages.
Abu Ras listed three “profound causes” for the ongoing wave
of criminal activities, including murder. One relates to land disputes and the
acute housing crisis in the Arab sector, and to lands owned by official local
authorities.
“High rates of unemployment, poor education, high rates of
youth at risk, and solving planning and housing obstacles, making capital and
credit available to Arab citizens while developing better financial services…
the government did not work or plan to fix any of these problems in a serious
way,” he said.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are a young community, with
30 percent of its population aged 18 to 23, and observers say they lack many of
the benefits that are afforded to the Jewish citizens of the same age.
“This makes them an easy target for mafia-like gangs to go
after them and recruit them for money,” said Abu Rass.
“The police is treating the Arab citizens as an enemy (of
the state),” he added.
Politicians and community leaders alike complain that they
are marginalized and deprived of financial services and budgets.
“There is no equality between Jews and Arabs when it comes
to government services,” said Abu Ras.
“For example, the lack of bank branches in a certain area
causes many Arabs to resort to the black market for a loan, and the interest
they have to pay is very high.”
Most of the victims are young people, but other groups are
increasingly falling victim to crime linked to unlicensed weapons, family
disputes and organized crime.
“The state and its institutions have failed everyone, they
do not care, they do not provide budgets, they do not help uplift the Arab and
Palestinian citizens of Israel and this is the result,” activist Maysam Jaljuli
of Mothers for Life organization told
Jordan News.
“I wonder if the police is looking at the rise in crimes in
terms of ‘Who cares’. They are Arabs, let them kill each other.”
Powerful Arab criminal gangs proliferate in Arab towns and
cities, demanding protection money.
The families of the victims and Arab officials see police
inaction as one of the main causes of the endemic violence that has plagued
their neighborhoods and cities.
“We have historically been marginalized and overlooked by
the state,” says Jaljuli.
The police in Israel has long complained that these
communities refuse to cooperate with them, making solving crimes difficult.
“This excuse by the police is proof that they are bankrupt.
It is obvious to us that when the police want to work and solve a crime, they
do not need us to help,” says Jaljuli, adding that “the proof is every Jewish
citizen who is killed in any Arab town: his killers will be arrested in a
matter of hours.”
“I am not sure if this is a result of their failure or an
official state policy,” said Jaljuli.
She works now with mothers who lost their children to
violence to bring awareness to this plight, and pressure the government to take
serious steps to combat crime in their communities.
With the soaring crime rate, the only ones that pay the
price are families of the victims.
In Qalansawa, Zahia Nasra, a grieving mother, still tears up
when she talks about the night her son Laith was killed. The mother of five
girls and three boys told
Jordan News that she woke up early that cold March
day to pray; her husband had already left for the mosque. She heard a commotion
and the sound of bullets. Nasra’s heart dropped as she ran to her other son’s
room to wake him up.
She says he ran next door where his young brother Mohammed
was with his friends celebrating a birthday.
Mohammad, the older brother, came back with the bad news.
“I heard the shooting and I fainted and screamed. I woke up
my other son and we went to see what happened. We found him dead on the couch,”
she said as she wiped her tears.
Qalansawa, a sleepy village of some 24,000 residents in
central Israel, in the area known as the triangle, is famous for its sweet
strawberries. It has seen a spike in crime and murder rates in the last few
years.
“The police came and never talked to us. They are not
interested in solving the crime even though they know the killers,” said Nasra.
Fighting back tears remembering her son, Nasra said she was
trying to come to terms with what happened, but “it is still fresh” in her
mind.
“If he died of natural causes or if he was sick, I would say
it is God’s will, but to be killed is hard for me to accept.”
Two were killed that night, including her son, and three
were wounded.
Wael Awwad, a Palestinian journalist from Nazareth, told
Jordan
News that the government has no intention to fight crime and its “plans to
fight crime are not serious”.
Many people like Awwad blame the steep spike in violence on
the failed policies of successive governments and the police.
“The government uses crime as a tool to control the Arab
community, and this is what we must fight. The government’s policy as a whole
has failed to prevent arms smuggling from the police and the army to criminals.
It [the government] must lift the protection some criminals enjoy from the
army, and target some well-known criminal groups. Like it did with criminal
families in the
Jewish community, he said.”
The current Israeli coalition government, which includes for
the first time an Arab Islamic party, promised to address this problem.
It has allocated more than $310 million as part of a new
plan to fight crime in Arab communities. Many believe that this should include
addressing the relative poverty that is widespread among Israel’s Arabs. But,
sadly, many believe that unless the government deals with the problem at its
roots, 2022 will be a replica of its predecessor.
“This is a temporary solution, but unfortunately I do not
see any real long-term plans. I am not optimistic,” said Jaljuli.
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