Wajeh Margiyeh was at his job as an ironworker in Hadera an hour and a half away from his home in Jaffa of Nazareth (also known as Yafia), an Arab town in Lower Galilee, when he got a phone call that there had been a massacre at the car wash owned by his nephew Naim. Among the dead was his 15-year-old son Rami.
“I started screaming and hitting myself,” he said, sitting in his home after he served guests bitter coffee which is traditionally drunk unsweetened to signify mourning.
“I was totally in shock. It was a massacre.”
A soft-spoken burly man with spiky gray hair, he described what neighbors told him happened that June morning. Eyewitnesses told him that two cars drove up to his nephew Naim’s car wash.
A group of young men, including Rami, were sitting drinking coffee. Two masked men jumped out of one of the cars and started shooting automatic weapons in all directions. Along with Naim and Rami, three customers – all young men – were killed.
Wajeh Margiyeh said his family is a prominent Christian family in the town and his nephew was not involved with any gangs. Israeli press reports say the killings, the highest single-day death toll in a non-terrorist incident, were part of an ongoing feud between two well-known crime families, the Bakri and Hariri families, that have claimed at least 26 lives so far this year.
A few days later, thousands of Arab citizens demonstrated against the ongoing violence in their community that has killed more than 100 people this year. The Abraham Initiatives, which monitors crime and fatalities in the Arab-Israeli community, reported that this year’s death toll from violent crime in the Arab sector has tripled since last year.
“We believe the Shabak (Israel’s internal security agency) is using the criminal gangs to control the Arab community. It’s dangerous, illegal, corrupt and racist.”
Yousef Jabarin
The death toll from violent crime in Israel's Arab sector keeps rising
Yousef Jabarin, a former Knesset member who lives in the Arab city of Umm el-Fahm, said the situation has become so dangerous that he does not want his wife or children to leave the house in the evenings.
Arab activists like Jabarin blame the Israeli police for the situation, saying that the police have declined to interfere with the criminals who have taken over the streets – and that if the same situation was happening in the Jewish sector, they would intervene to stop it.
“We believe the Shabak (Israel’s internal security agency) is using the criminal gangs to control the Arab community,” he said. “It’s dangerous, illegal, corrupt and racist.”
Arab officials say that unemployment is growing, especially among young men. They are not sufficiently prepared for university as they neither speak Hebrew well nor have the academic background needed. So tens of thousands of Arab youth do not have the benefit of any kind of framework and often end up turning to crime.
“There is no vision for our youth, no future, no education and no work,” said Maher Khalyleh, the mayor of Jaffa of Nazareth.
“So the young people go to work for the gangs, collecting protection money or even shooting people.”
Almost all Arab officials agree that the violence has spiraled out of control. The “crime families” demand protection money from hundreds of businesses.
Young men who need loans for a wedding or to build a home are not able to get them from the bank, so they borrow on the black market which is also controlled by these same families.
Guns are also ubiquitous in the Arab sector. The guns are either Israeli army guns bought on the black market, or are smuggled in from Jordan or the West Bank. Anyone who wants a gun and can pay NIS 50,000 and get one.
In 2021, the previous government announced a plan called Safe Track under the responsibility of then-deputy public security minister Yoav Segalovitz, with funding of NIS 2.5 billion. The plan aimed to crack down on arms smuggling, dismantle organized crime, stop its funding and build trust with Arab local authorities.
The plan was meant to be long-term, but quickly showed results. By the end of 2022 murder rates in the Arab sector dropped by 13 percent and other indicators of crime were down. Many of the main players in the crime families left Israel, moving to Turkey where they could more easily run their businesses.
But as soon as the new government took over in late 2022, with the hardline Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister, he canceled the plan. Crime went back up and many of the criminals who had fled Israel returned.
“Under the previous government it was effective, and it worked, but now the police are very weak,” Khalyleh said.
“In the last six months, we have witnessed an increase in disputes among criminal families and murder rates have gone up.”
Police chief Yaakov “Kobi” Shabtai was quoted in May as saying that it is in the “nature” and “mentality” of Arab Israelis to kill, a statement that led to calls for him to be ousted.
In any case, Arab activists say, the police do little to stop violence in the Arab sector. They say that they do not believe Ben-Gvir is really concerned about the violence in the Arab sector.
“We live in chaos which is good for the Israeli government,” said Imran Kinana, the former mayor of Jaffa of Nazareth.
“Most of the Israeli politicians see us as a fifth column or a demographic threat.”
He also said that Arab society has become more violent in recent years and more people use guns to settle disputes.
“If two people have a fight over a parking space, in the past they would have a fistfight, now they will take out their guns.”
He estimates that there are 400,000 guns in the Arab sector for a population just over two million Arab citizens including children, who make up 21 percent of Israel’s total population.
Ben-Gvir said he wants to deal with the Arab sector violence in two ways. The first is by involving the Shabak (Israel’s vaunted security agency) in trying to fight the violence. Shabak officials have said that this idea would take manpower and effort away from the fight against terror and would be a difficult mission in any case. The minister has also received a promise of a “national guard” which many say would simply be a private militia and would not effectively fight violence.
When Ben-Gvir arrived on the scene of the murder at the Jaffa of Nazareth gas station, he was met with anger by Communist activist Bashar Nahash. Accoring to Ben-Gvir, Nahash tried to prevent him from touring the site.
“He wants a militia to deal with Arabs,” Nahash said, “I know he will not help us with our personal security.”
Kinana said that even when the police investigate a crime in the Arab sector, many residents are afraid to talk.
“I am afraid that if I give any information to the police, I will be the next target,” he said.
Former Knesset member Yusuf Jabarin said the reason so many young Arab men turn to crime is because they have no other options. Most Arab citizens of Israel live on the periphery, where there are fewer employment options. If a member of a crime family offers one of these youths NIS 10,000 (more than the average monthly salary in Israel) to shoot in the air to frighten someone, he will happily take the job.
Jabarin said the Israeli government must address the issues facing Arab society with a widespread program that includes funding for education, programs for youth at risk and a program to collect illegal weapons and crack down on gang violence. ■