‘We want them to listen’: Israel’s Arab community demands more law enforcement, dismissal of Minister Ben Gvir amid surging crime wave

Arab community leaders and politicians led a mass protest at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem on Sunday, demanding more action against the shocking wave of crime and murder that has been gripping Israel’s Arab sector for the past few years.

More than 250 people, most of them Arabs, were murdered in crime-related shootings last year, while this year has already seen 36 murders. On Monday morning, another man was shot and seriously wounded in the Arab-majority town of Tira in central Israel.

Sunday’s protest began with a mass convoy of several hundred cars that made its way to Jerusalem, causing large traffic jams along the central highways of the country.

Knesset Member Ofer Cassif, from the secular Arab party Hadash-Tal. told The Jerusalem Post the protest was “nothing short of historic,” noting, “Thousands of Jews are standing alongside” the Arab community.

Leading members of Arab Ta’al and Balad were also in attendance, as well as Hadash-Tal party leader, Knesset Member Ayman Odeh. “We decided to disrupt traffic and our daily routine. Why are we doing this? Because we understand that if we do not fight crime now, the time will come when there will be a thousand people killed each year,” he said.

“Our demands are clear. We want to live in a society without weapons and without organized crime groups. We want to live.”

Speaking to the JPost, Odeh vowed that nationwide protests would further intensify: “We are disrupting things because we want them to listen to us.”

Arab leaders have long blamed the Israel Police for allegedly refusing to enforce the law equally and neglecting majority-Arab areas, claims they say have intensified since Itamar Ben Gvir assumed the role of National Security minister, which includes oversight and direction of the police.

Ben Gvir's dismissal has been a central demand of the protests.

Most of the shootings and murders have been attributed to rival crime gangs fighting turf battles, often targeting family members not involved in criminal activity as part of revenge killings and blood feuds.

Police officials and their defenders have argued that a “code of honor” and a general lack of cooperation among the Arab community have, in many cases, made receiving witness testimony that can lead to convictions almost impossible.

On Sunday, Ben Gvir argued on Kan Reshet Bet Radio that the crime rate in the Arab community is higher than among Jews. “There is 20% less murder in the Jewish sector, let’s put that on the table. 60% fewer murders of Jewish women, and 20% fewer car thefts,” he said.

Asked about the crime surge, he responded: “I don’t work only for the Arabs.”

“There’s no doubt the phenomenon is serious, and there’s no doubt we want to fight it, let there be no misunderstanding,” Ben Gvir continued, arguing that the current surge in crime is “the product of 40 years of neglect. Weapons are everywhere, and an attorney general who doesn’t care.”

“There is also no doubt that there are two states: There is a state for Jews, and we [the Arab sector] live without police, without a state,” Odeh argued in a JPost interview.

“We tell the state: ‘Our culture, our education, at home and at school, is successful with 99% of Arab citizens.’ Our problem is 1% [of the Arab population]. You need to deal with the 1% – the crime organizations.”

Odeh vowed that the protests would expand to an economic boycott, including halting shopping at malls and using banks, arguing that this would ultimately benefit Israeli society, since “the biggest harm to the economy is crime itself.”

Responding to Odeh’s recent comments, Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel argued that he, like other Arab leaders, demands more governance against crime while vilifying the Israeli state, including its police force.

“On the one hand, you whine about weapons leaking from the army [to criminal gangs] and place the responsibility on the state, and on the other hand, you call for civilian disobedience and tell Arab police officers at [Jerusalem’s] Damascus Gate: ‘Throw away the weapons.’ You can't cry about the lack of governance in the morning, and sabotage the police's work in the evening.”

“The blood of the murdered in the sector is also on the hands of those who turned the police officers in the sector into enemies,” Haskel argued. “It's time to decide: Are you striving to integrate the sector into the successful society in the Middle East, or are you an agent of chaos who undermines the State of Israel ‘in the name of democracy?’”