'Arab cities are run by gangs, and the police don't care'

• Author: ZEV STUB
• Published date: 26 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"The gangs are in control of the streets, and they control what goes on in the city, selling drugs and terrorizing residents," says Kifah Agbaria, who has lost a brother and three relatives to street violence in the past two years. "Every hour, you hear shooting and people acting crazy, and nobody is doing anything about it."

Last July, Agbaria's brother, Khaled, was gunned down just outside the family's home. "That morning, he prayed at home, and then went out at 5 a.m. to go to work," Agbaria says. He was killed on the street a few blocks away."

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That same year, a cousin with disabilities was shot in the head in front of his home on his way to have dinner with his parents. Several months later, another cousin was killed on a Friday after attending a rally protesting violence, Agbaria says. Yet another cousin is now recovering in the hospital from gunshot wounds in his hands and feet.

Police told Agbaria's family that they don't have any leads for any of the cases.

"I yelled at them, 'You have security cameras everywhere on the streets,' and said they were lying," she says. "Two days later, the investigator was removed from the case. The police have still not called, and they don't care at all."

Such cases have come into the spotlight in recent weeks as the mayhem on Arab streets continues to spiral out of control. In the first nine months of 2021, some 93 members of Arab communities have been murdered in domestic cases, with six recorded over the last week alone.

A deep mistrust of the police by Israeli-Arabs has been brewing for more than two decades, explains Ola Najami Yousef, director of safe community initiatives at The Abraham Initiatives, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting equal rights for Israel's Jewish and Arab residents.

Thirteen Arab-Israelis were killed by police in October 2000, at the beginning of the Second Intifada, in a series of clashes that left a scar on Arab society that is still felt today, Najami Yousef says. Arabs lost all confidence in Israeli law enforcement officials, and while a 2003 report by the Or Commission listed a number of recommendations for improving relations between Israeli police and Arab citizens, the situation actually got worse after that point.

"From that time until 2016, police decreased their presence in cities, and crime rose significantly," Najami Yousef says. "Families...