On Wednesday, Israel slipped into a tragic and familiar routine: Four Arab Israelis were murdered within the span of just a few hours.
Three men were shot and killed in the northern town of Shfaram. Another was murdered in Arara in the Negev. Four men, between the ages of 20 and 50, killed one after the other, in different parts of the country, by different gunmen, in what has become a grim national pattern.
And the year has only just begun.
Since New Year’s Day, 11 Arab Israelis have been murdered across the country. Add that to the record-high 252 homicides in the Arab sector in 2025, and it becomes impossible to pretend this is merely a “problem.” Israel is in the midst of a national crisis – one that too many prefer to ignore. The danger is that ignoring it does not make it go away. It accelerates it.
And the numbers prove it. In 2018, there were 74 homicides in the Arab sector. By 2022, the number had crossed 100. Today, we are well over 250. What once looked like a warning light is now a flashing alarm.
So what is the government’s plan?
Sadly, it is hard to find one.
A national plan is needed
Instead of a serious, holistic strategy – one that confronts organized crime, dismantles gangs, aggressively collects illegal weapons, strengthens education frameworks, and pulls young people off the streets – the government is focused more on theatrics. Under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the police prefer heavy-handed operations, such as the current campaign in Tarabin.
Do the police need to be more active? Absolutely. But believing that a single operation, no matter how forceful, will produce real structural change is a fantasy. It is burying one’s head in the sand.
Real change requires a national plan. Even Arab leaders acknowledge that the crisis is rooted not only in policing but in deeper social failures: a struggling education system, a lack of frameworks for post-high-school youth, high unemployment and poverty, a culture that too often tolerates violence, and a weakening respect for the rule of law – sometimes extending even to basic norms like wearing a seat belt.
There are financial issues as well; Israeli banks make it hard for Arabs to take loans, pushing them to the grey market. It is a vicious cycle that will not simply end on its own.
The government could, for example, establish a permanent interministerial task force to address the violence with plans across education, welfare, employment, infrastructure, policing, and local governance. That is what serious states do when confronted with systemic breakdowns.
Has it done so? Obviously not.
Instead, Ben-Gvir has increasingly floated another idea: bringing the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) into the fight against crime in the Arab sector.
This is deeply problematic. Not only does it divert the Shin Bet from its primary mission of combating terrorism, and not only are its invasive and aggressive tools wrong to be used against Israeli citizens, but more fundamentally, it simply means that the government is outsourcing the problem. Instead of fixing what is broken, the government is acknowledging that the police are not capable of doing their job.
In other words, bringing in the Shin Bet is not a solution. It is an escape from the real work of creating effective civilian law enforcement and governance.
Arab disenfranchisement
All of this unfolds against a deeper backdrop: the long-standing disenfranchisement many Arab Israelis feel toward the state. And we cannot pretend that “Jewish Israel” has nothing to do with it. As one young Arab entrepreneur told me this week, “Even if I wanted to serve in the IDF, would the army trust me? Would it suddenly want 5,000 Arabs in uniform?”
For better or for worse, we all know the answer.
And while Arabs can do national service – currently only around 3% do – can we genuinely expect them to when they feel that the state doesn’t care if they live to see tomorrow?
That is the tragedy of the runaway homicide plague. Obviously it undermines the sense of security and causes 20% of this country – over 2 million people – to live in fear. But it also reinforces the feeling of “second class,” something every Arab is reminded of whenever they get pulled aside by police or enter the terminal at Ben-Gurion Airport, where they undergo exhaustive interrogation and inspection.
But what this government refuses to recognize is that there is an opportunity to change this, and unfortunately, like so much more in this country, it looks like it is poised to miss it because of politics.
Let’s recall what happened in May 2021, when Israel’s mixed Jewish-Arab cities erupted in violence on the sidelines of Operation Guardian of the Walls in the Gaza Strip. Lod, Haifa, Acre, Ramla, and Jerusalem turned into battlegrounds as clashes broke out between Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis.
By the time the fighting ended, four Israeli citizens – three Jews and one Arab – were dead, some lynched by mobs. Hundreds more, Jews and Arabs alike, were wounded. Synagogues were torched. Storefronts were smashed. Entire neighborhoods were left damaged.
The IDF was particularly concerned by what had happened and established a new reserve unit tasked with protecting major highways under the assumption that Arab Israelis would try to block them in future conflicts to prevent the deployment of forces to the North or South.
Post Oct-7 integration
But now think about this: Since the October 7 massacre, Arab Israelis have not only refrained from rioting, but according to multiple polls, for most of the first year of the war, many supported Israel’s right to defend itself.
Wouldn’t this be enough to illustrate the opportunity before us? Shouldn’t this lead us to believe in the integration of not only Arab Israeli people but also political parties into a future coalition, something that before the war had happened but now is rejected by almost every politician in the opposition?
The murder rate in the Arab sector is not just a tragedy for Arab citizens. It is an indictment of the state. A country that allows an entire community to bleed year after year is not merely failing them; it is eroding its own authority.
Israel cannot demand shared responsibility or civic partnership while signaling that some lives matter less. If this crisis continues to be treated as someone else’s problem, the price will eventually be paid by everyone.
The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD policy forum, a senior fellow at JPPI, and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. His newest book is While Israel Slept.