As violent crime soars, Israeli Arabs ask: Where’s the government?

It was on a recent Thursday afternoon that two cars pulled up to the heavy metal gate of a car wash in Jaffa of Nazareth, a small Arab town in northern Israel adjacent to its better-known ancient neighbor.

A 15-year-old youth, Rami Marjeyeh, opened the gate and let in one of the cars, while the second vehicle idled on the quiet residential street outside.

Minutes later, two gunmen stepped out and opened fire, shattering the weekend calm before speeding away. Rami and four men, including Rami’s cousin Naim Marjeyeh, the owner of the business, were killed instantly. 

“It was a massacre,” Wajih Marjeyeh, Rami’s father and Naim’s uncle, says while sitting last week in the family compound overlooking the car wash turned murder scene. “How did this thing happen to us? ... We really don’t know; we have no problems with anyone.”

Neri Zilber

Wajih Marjeyeh, in Jaffa of Nazareth on June 15, says he's at a loss for an explanation after losing his 15-year-old son, Rami, and nephew, Naim, in the shooting at his nephew's car wash.

The bloodbath this month shocked an Israeli public seemingly inured to the spiraling death toll from violent crime among its Arab citizens. According to police figures, nearly 100 Arab Israelis have been killed already this year, mostly from gun violence, triple the number by the same time last year. Other sources put the toll even higher.

Arab citizens make up some 20% of the Israeli population. But last year, 116 Arab Israelis accounted for three-quarters of all the Israelis killed by violent crime, according to the nonprofit Abraham Initiatives. Local officials say gun ownership has ballooned, with an estimated 400,000 illegal weapons distributed among an Arab Israeli population of 2 million.

Arab Israeli officials and analysts say the violence is almost entirely due to increasingly brazen Arab criminal organizations that in recent years have stepped up their operations, including extortion, drugs, and illegal weapons. And the rise in crime, they say, correlates directly to a lack of opportunity for young Arab men.

But those same officials and analysts attribute much of the blame for the violence to an absence of state attention, and especially to the current far-right Israeli government, which is either unable or unwilling to act. Most problematic in their minds is National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a Jewish ultranationalist convicted in the past of anti-Arab incitement who is now responsible for the Israel Police.

Ammar Awad/Reuters

Israeli Border Police officers and local residents gather at the car wash where five people were killed in one of the deadliest crime-related shootings in Israel's recent history, in Jaffa of Nazareth, June 8, 2023.

“He doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘national’ or ‘security,’” says Bashar Nakhash, an educator and activist in Jaffa of Nazareth who heckled the minister when he came to the town after the killings. “For him, it’s perfect when Arabs are killing Arabs; this is the idea of Ben-Gvir.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week for the first time convened a ministerial committee to address the gun violence, which was described by Mr. Netanyahu’s chief aide as “an emergency situation ... of community-wide terrorism in the Arab towns.”

Mr. Netanyahu insisted that “ours is a government of all Israeli citizens – Jews and Arabs alike.”

Yet Arab Israelis are skeptical, with local officials citing inequities that point to decades of neglect by the central government: minimal budgetary support for things like infrastructure development and new schools and playgrounds; unequal land distribution and a lack of housing permits; and an ineffective police presence and communities awash in guns.

The neglect compounds the problem, they say, of a growing and restless youth demographic – especially young men.

“Unfortunately we see no vision for the future, no hope, no education or work for the younger generation,” says Maher Khaliliah, the mayor of Jaffa of Nazareth. And that, he says, makes it harder for young men to accomplish what he calls their main priority: buying a home.

Neri Zilber

Maher Khaliliah, the mayor of Jaffa of Nazareth, says high unemployment and other economic barriers for young Arab men are contributing to a rise in crime.

While most of their Jewish age cohort enlist in the military after high school, young Arab men (who are exempt from service) are left with no structure and few prospects. The Arab youth unemployment rate, according to analysts, stands at some 30%; banks are often reluctant to provide them loans. It is these individuals across Arab Israeli society who, according to Mr. Khaliliah, either take out exorbitant black-market loans from criminal groups that they’re then unable to pay back, or go work as foot soldiers.

“They do the dirty work – collecting protection money [from businesses], intimidation, shootings,” the mayor says, citing the “fast and easy” cash on offer.

The massacre at the local car wash, he says, may have been connected to an escalating “war” between two such prominent groups. “They couldn’t reach their direct target directly, so they went after the relatives [of the target],” he adds. “They wanted to send a message: ‘We can reach everyone, everywhere.’”

Across several interviews around town, no one could say for certain who among the five killed was the actual target, even tangentially – or if they did know, they were reluctant to say. This lack of local Arab cooperation with the authorities is often held up by Jewish Israeli officials as a major impediment to crime-solving, although in recent years the Arab Israeli public has demanded more – not less – police involvement in their communities.

“The claim that Arabs don’t cooperate with the police is not because we don’t want to but because we’re afraid. Everyone thinks, ‘Maybe I’ll be the next target,’” says Imran Kinana, a former mayor of Jaffa of Nazareth. “Jews pay taxes to the government for services and security. Arabs pay protection money to gangsters just to be safe and protected.” 

Older forms of conflict mediation, where the writ of sheikhs and tribal elders was obeyed, have broken down, Mr. Kinana adds. “Arab Israeli society is not traditional like it used to be,” he says. “We’re now part of modern economic society; there are no authorities anymore.”

So far this year, only a handful of the 100 killings in the Arab community have been solved, according to official figures.

Ammar Awad/Reuters

People attend a protest following the deadly shooting attack at a nearby car wash, in Nazareth, Israel, June 9, 2023.

Into this breach, Mr. Netanyahu has said he wants to increase the role of the vaunted Shin Bet internal security service to go after the Arab organized crime groups, a controversial move that legal authorities (and the Shin Bet itself) oppose.

Local Arab officials point to the success the previous, short-lived Israeli government had in slightly decreasing the Arab Israeli murder rate last year. According to analysts and former officials, a “whole-of-government” approach was implemented by Yoav Segalovich, the deputy minister for internal security, who coordinated across multiple agencies, including the police, intelligence services, and tax authorities. More than anything, Arab officials maintain, it was made a high-priority issue.

“I’m confident the Israel Police has all the tools to crack down [on the criminal gangs], but they don’t have the political will,” says Youssef Jabareen, a former parliamentarian. “Look at the quick reaction, within hours, to any nationalist crimes committed against Jews. Israel can find weapons in Sudan and Iran, but they don’t see it here inside Israel?”

Tellingly, Mr. Segalovich was the only official who came to pay his condolences to the Marjeyeh family for its loss.

“Not one police official came to speak with us, not one government minister, not even one Arab politician. Only Segalovich. It’s like we don’t even live in the state of Israel,” says Hany Marjeyeh, an uncle of the two victims. (The Israel Police did not deny the account, saying only that they took the killings “with utmost seriousness” and were committed to “bring[ing] the perpetrators to justice.”)

The Marjeyehs, like many other families in Jaffa of Nazareth, are Christian; they have lived for generations peacefully next to their Muslim neighbors. The victims at the car wash were similarly both Christian and Muslim. And as the Hebrew-language signs over businesses all over town attest, many Israeli Jews visit, and could, according to locals, have easily been present and slain as well.

Naim Marjeyeh, the car wash owner, had no problems with the business, the family insists. They stress that theirs is a successful and educated clan, including doctors, lawyers, and university students. Acquaintances of the other victims also maintain that they had no known underworld ties. Young Rami’s only misfortune was that he had finished school for the day and wanted to help his cousin.

And yet the bloodbath at a random business on a quiet side street in a small town in northern Israel did happen. Like countless other families all across the country, the Marjeyehs have been left with only questions and a shattered home.

“They killed my son and my nephew,” says Tawfiq Marjeyeh, Naim’s father, breaking down in tears. “We have no one to protect us.”