Tsunami of crime has Arab citizens losing faith in police

• Published date: 08 October 2021
• Author: KSENIA SVETLOVA/THE MEDIA LINE
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Why is Israel, a country with one of the ablest security forces in the Middle East, losing its battle against crime?

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'We know who will be killed by the end of the year'

"Once I was at a wedding in my city when one of the top criminals entered the hall. The singer immediately started praising him, and a few young men reached out to him and arranged a place of honor for him. It seemed that they respected him a lot," Thabet Abu Rass, co-director of the Abraham Initiatives, which promotes Jewish-Arab coexistence, said.

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Abu Rass resides in Qalansuwa, an Arab city in central Israel. He knows some of the victims who were shot or threatened in recent years personally; in fact – everybody does.

"They shot a municipal general manager a few months ago, and during the last municipal elections, the leading candidate was threatened. In the end, he decided to withdraw his candidacy. Actually, sometimes we know who is going to get killed by the end of the year," Abu Rass says.

Today, when hardly a day goes by without a shooting, a homicide, or a violent fight, it's impossible to ignore this terrifying phenomenon. It's widely reported in the Israeli media and occasionally the news from the raging crime in the Arab sector opens the news reports. Then the hashtag #Arab_Lives_Matter trends on the Israeli Twitter segment for a few days.

However, many social activists, members of Knesset and residents of Arab cities bitterly say that for years the government preferred to look the other way and ignore the growing problem.

"It was building up for quite a few years. Ten years ago I heard my friends say, 'You must intervene in this matter before it's too late,'" says Mossi Raz, a Meretz MK and longtime peace and coexistence activist. "We did not fully understand how fast the situation would deteriorate, and Israeli and Jewish society, in general, was less concerned. Only today that is starting to change."

Raz rejects the claim often voiced in Israel that the killings have roots in Arab culture.

"If it is a cultural issue, why was the situation entirely different 30 years ago? Why is the situation different in Jordan or the occupied territories?" he asks.

"We are talking about powerful criminal gangs that thrive on extortion and protection, about neglect that lasted for too many years...