Al-Jazeera / September 27, 2023
Palestinians and advocacy groups say Israeli authorities have long turned a blind eye to crime in their communities.
Six Palestinian citizens of Israel have been killed in two separate shootings, police said, the latest fatalities in a crime wave hitting the country’s Palestinian minority.
Five members of the same family were killed on Wednesday in a shooting in northern Israel. The three men and two women were shot dead in broad daylight in the town of Basmat Tabun, northwest of Nazareth, police said in a statement.
The Abraham Initiatives, a Jewish-Palestinian advocacy and monitoring group in Israel, identified the victims as a couple and their three adult children.
Police said they were treating the incident as criminal and hunting down suspected assailants.
Earlier on Wednesday, masked gunmen ambushed and killed another Palestinian citizen of Israel, who was on his way to work in the nearby coastal city of Haifa. Police said they were investigating whether the two shootings were connected.
Authorities in Al-Halisa, the Haifa neighbourhood where Wednesday’s first killing took place, shuttered all schools and asked that students study from home for at least another day.
Wednesday’s fatalities brought the number of Palestinian citizens of Israel killed so far this year to 188, according to the Abraham Initiatives.
Palestinians have long voiced anger at what they have said is a deliberate lack of policing in their towns and neighbourhoods – giving criminals and drug dealers free rein.
Palestinian citizens of Israel comprise about 20 percent of the country’s 9.7 million population. They have also long suffered from poverty, discrimination and neglect by the government.
The country’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, promised to crack down on crime in Israel’s Palestinian communities when he took office late last year.
But Ben-Gvir, known as an anti-Palestinian provocateur, has seemingly done little to bring safety to Palestinian towns and villages.
The violence has instead intensified, with more than double the number of such homicides taking place for similar periods in recent years.
Less than 10 percent of similar cases have been solved this year, the Abraham Initiatives group added, describing the surge in violence as a symptom of both police indifference and Palestinian distrust of the police.
“The prime minister must sack the minister of public security and immediately put in place a plan to address criminality in the Arab [Palestinian] society. It’s a state of emergency,” the Abraham Initiatives said in a statement.
“Police do not have the willingness or the capacity,” said Thabet Abu Rass, the group’s director. “People are afraid to go outside. It’s a very dangerous situation right now.”
SOURCE: AL-JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
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6 Palestinian citizens of Israel are killed in crime-related shootings in the country’s north
Isabel DeBre
AP / September 27, 2023
JERUSALEM – Five family members were killed in a mass shooting Wednesday in an Palestinian town in northern Israel, police and advocates said, the latest victims of a recent surge of gun violence within the country’s Palestinian communities. Another Palestinian citizen of Israel was killed in a separate shooting earlier Wednesday.
Israeli police said that three men and two women were shot and killed at a house in the northern Bedouin town of Basmat Tab’un. They said they were treating the incident as criminal and hunting down suspected assailants. Israeli medics said that a sixth man was shot and wounded in the rampage.
The Abraham Initiatives, a Jewish-Palestinian advocacy and monitoring group in Israel, identified the victims as a Palestinian couple and their three children.
The police declined to provide further details on the shooting or the victims due to the ongoing investigation, which they said involved several national units “diligently pursuing all leads using advanced technological resources.” Previous such shootings have involved disputes between organized crime families.
Earlier on Wednesday, masked gunmen ambushed and killed another Palestinian citizen of Israel, who was on his way to work in the nearby coastal city of Haifa. Police said they were investigating whether the two shootings were connected.
Authorities in Al-Halisa, the Haifa neighborhood where Wednesday’s first killing took place, shuttered all schools and asked that students study from home for at least another day.
Israel’s Palestinian communities long have suffered from poverty, discrimination, crime and neglect by the government.
The country’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, promised to crack down on crime in Israel’s Palestinian sector when he took office late last year. But the violence has intensified, with 188 people killed this year, according to the Abraham Initiatives — more than double the number of such homicides for similar periods in recent years. Israel’s Palestinian minority makes up roughly a fifth of Israel’s population.
Less than 10% of the cases have been solved this year, the group added, describing the surge in violence as a symptom of both police indifference and Palestinian distrust of the police. Some advocates directly blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultranationalist government for doing too little to fight crimes against Palestinian citizens.
“Police do not have the willingness or the capacity,” said Thabet Abu Rass, director of the Abraham Initiatives, calling on Netanyahu to fire Ben-Gvir over the rash of killings. “People are afraid to go outside. It’s a very dangerous situation right now.”
Lawmakers also expressed deep concern over the violence and demanded government intervention.
“The blood of those murdered today in the massacre are on the hands (of Ben-Gvir) and Prime Minister Netanyahu,” said Ahmad Tibi, a veteran Palestinian lawmaker, urging Netanyahu to convene a meeting on crime in Palestinian communities “as it did for Jewish communities years ago.”
Wednesday’s shootings are separate from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has seen more than yearlong surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, which Israel captured along with the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war.
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Palestinian family of five shot dead as crime rates in Israel soar
Reuters / September 27, 2023
JERUSALEM – Five members of an Palestinian family were shot dead in their home in Israel, police said on Wednesday, in the latest in a wave of crime-related killings in Israel’s Palestinian communities that has reached a new peak this year.
The shooting of the five, including a woman and two teenagers, in the northern town of Basmat Tab’un followed a separate incident in which a 50-year-old man was killed earlier on Wednesday.
More than 180 Palestinian citizens in Israel have been killed in crime-related violence since January – a seven-year high – in a spate of killings that have continued unchecked, drawing accusations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist government was ignoring the bloodshed.
“Israel has the abilities, the Israeli government understands what needs to be done, everybody understands what needs to be done, there simply is no will and no leadership,” said Mansour Abbas, leader of one of the parties that represent Israel’s Palestinian minority.
Palestinian mayors have accused the government and police of deliberately neglecting their communities and of enabling criminals to act with impunity. They have refused to work with the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has past convictions of support for terrorism and anti-Palestinian incitement, and have demanded that Netanyahu intervene instead.
With Israel facing its worst political crisis in decades, over Netanyahu’s drive to push through divisive changes to the judiciary, Palestinian citizens say the collapse of personal safety in their communities must receive more government attention.
Ben-Gvir, who did not immediately comment on Wednesday’s incident, has rejected accusations of inaction. He has said fighting crime is high on his agenda and that police have stepped up crime-busting activity, including the seizure of weapons and funds from criminal groups.
“As police, we will do everything to get to the killers,” police spokesman Eli Levi told reporters at the scene of Wednesday’s crime.
Palestinian citizens, most of whom are descendants of Palestinians who remained in Israel during the mass exodus of refugees in the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, make up about a fifth of the country’s population.
They have for decades faced high poverty rates, poorly funded schools and overcrowded towns lacking services and say they are treated as second-class citizens compared with Jewish Israelis.
Reporting by Henriette Chacar; editing by James Mackenzie and William Maclean
