Police statistics: Almost 75% of Israeli murder victims are Arab citizens

Almost three quarters (73%) of all Israeli murder victims have been Arab citizens in recent years, according to police statistics for the period between 2018 and 2023. By comparison, about a fifth of the Israeli population belongs to the Arab-Israeli community.

The Association for Freedom of Information released the new data, which showed that a whopping 712 of 981 Israeli citizens murdered between 2018 and 2023 were Arab nationals, Ynet news channel reported last week. The majority of the perpetrators were Arab Israelis.

The vast majority of victims were men. However, 82 Arab women were also murdered during this period, compared to 56 Israeli Jewish women.

The report showed the geographical distribution of the recorded murders. 229 Arab Israelis were murdered in northern Israel, where over half of the total Arab-Israeli population lives. In addition, 176 Arab Israelis were murdered in the central part of the country, 44 in the south and 36 in Jerusalem and its surroundings. In addition, the data showed that many of the victims were murdered in cities with a mixed Jewish and Arab population, such as Haifa in the north and Ramla or Lod in central Israel.

Shahira Shelbi, head of the “Abraham Initiativesan NGO that advocates for equal rights for Arabs and Jews in Israeli society, was not surprised by the level of crime in mixed cities.

“It is not surprising that the mixed cities are at the top of this list,” Shelbi said. “The Arab population in these cities suffers from neglect and discrimination. The education and housing system is not good and crime is nothing new there. We know that the crime families emerged from these cities. At first they were part of the Jewish crime families and over the years they became independent.”

The number of Arab murder victims decreased during the lockdowns in Israel due to the COVID pandemic and during the previous Bennett-Lapid government, which actively sought to combat the social phenomenon. However, since the pandemic and during the current coalition government under Netanyahu, the number of Arab victims has increased again.

Following growing pressure to intervene, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in August 2023 that Israel’s The Shin Bet secret service would join the fight against the increasing crime within Arab-Israeli society.

So far, however, the number of Arab murder victims has continued to rise. The problem is largely attributed to inadequate police presence in Arab Israeli communities and the proliferation of illegal firearms controlled by local Arab crime gangs. Some experts have warned that if nothing is done, the current violence among Arabs in Israel could potentially spread to Israel's Jewish population.

Shelbi noted that the number of Arab-Israeli women murdered has increased in recent years.

“The number of women murdered in Arab society has increased in recent years, although there are fewer and fewer murder cases that were previously defined as 'family honour,' as was common practice,” says Shelbi.

“In the past, there were cases where a man would murder his partner, for example because of a divorce dispute, but that has changed. Today, the partner no longer allows herself to be killed, but instead hires a killer for a few thousand shekels,” she added.

Discrimination and socioeconomic poverty are part of the reasons why Arab Israelis are vastly overrepresented in national crime statistics, both as victims and perpetrators. But some experts argue that solving the problem also requires a dramatic shift in education, culture, cooperation and values ​​within the more traditional Arab-Israeli society.