Six Arab Israelis were killed in criminal violence incidents at four different locations in 24 hours, continuing the record-breaking trend of violence-related casualties in the sector.
A man was stabbed to death Monday morning in Abu Ghosh. Police arrested a 31-year-old suspect over the incident.Later, a shooting in Lod left a 14-year-old dead and two injured. Police sources suspect that individuals at the scene attempted to physically wash away evidence.
Late on Monday, a doctor, Abdullah Awad, from Mazra’a near Acre, was shot at a clinic in Kafr Yasif, near Abu Snan. Several suspects were seen fleeing the scene.On Sunday, three men in their 20s and 30s were killed in a shooting in Abu Snan. A fourth person was also seriously injured in the shooting, which took place near a corner store, police added.
At this point last year, the number of Arab Israelis killed was 12, according to the Abraham Initiatives.
The background for the incident in Abu Snan was criminal, according to police, which conjectured that the incident was likely a conflict “between criminals.”The head of Abu Snan’s local council, Sif Mashlab, told KAN Reshet Bet that those killed in the shooting did not have a criminal background.Mashlab said the police did not make sufficient use of intelligence in this situation and other similar incidents, saying, “I am in daily contact with police, and I want to tell them one thing they are not doing and need to do.”“If police act based on [intelligence about an incident], they will manage to prevent many cases,” he said.
Urgent letter to Netanyahu
The Abraham Initiatives sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday morning, demanding he appoint a permanent national security minister.The organization highlighted that under former minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, many plans to combat violence in the Arab sector were stopped and budgets were cut.“Ben-Gvir’s tenure severely harmed the trust of the Arab sector in police and law enforcement, and the new minister will need to rehabilitate this trust,” the organization said.“A permanent appointment of a national security minister should be made – one who is professional and serious – whose primary focus will be combating crime. Efforts should be carried out in cooperation with local Arab leadership, and the police should be strengthened to a degree that enables them to effectively address the scale of the phenomenon,” the organization added.Some 230 Arab Israelis were murdered in 2024, according to Abraham Initiatives data.This surpassed the previous year’s death toll in the sector due to crime, the highest since the state was founded, and over double the number of deaths compared to the previous year, at 224.In comparison, in 2022, 116 Arabs were killed in Israel, while in 2021, 126 were killed; in 2020, 96 were killed, and in 2019, 89 were killed.Only 10.5% of 2023’s murders were solved by the end of that year, and just 14.8% of the murders in 2024 were solved, the Abraham Initiatives added.