One murder follows another, and shootings come on the heels of shootings. We thought we had seen the height of violence and crime in the Arab sector, but it appears that it will still reach new heights, in spite of all the pain that entails.
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The murder of the teen Mohammad Adas in Jaljulia was painful, sad, and difficult, but since January 2020, over 130 Arab Israelis have been murdered and most were shot with illegal guns.
In the eyes of the Arab public, the police have become part of the problem rather than the solution, and if we take a step back, we see that the Israel Police arrives to handle a crime after it already takes place. Our problem as an Arab society begins long before specific crimes or murders happen. The problem is with education from very early childhood, the enormous gaps between Arab and Jewish society in Israel, and the fact that Arab society has become the playing field of Israeli crime organizations. This happened after the government labels Jewish organized crime as a strategic threat over two decades ago and treated it with an iron fist, going after the heads of the crime families in Israel and abroad.
For weeks, there have been demonstrations in Arab communities against violence. A few weeks ago, the protests reached new heights in the city Umm al-Fahm, where the police proved that they know how to wield an iron fist against people who go out to protest crime, rather than organized crime itself.
The Knesset and the government, along with the Arab leadership and Arab MKs, should take action to pass stricter gun control laws and prevent the distinction currently drawn between guns used for terrorist acts and guns used for crime, because guns kill no matter what the context is, and murder is murder.
The Israel Police need to take a two-pronged approach: to deal a fatal blow to the organized crime families, even through administrative detentions and serious financial sanctions, including confiscation of property and assets; and to collect illegal weapons.
Arab society is already saying "We can't take it anymore," and the sense is that the entire sector is sitting on a powder keg. I wouldn't wonder if protests over violence and crime turned into serious, ongoing protests about other things if the situation goes on this way.
It is not impossible to solve this, and the way Arab citizens see it, if the Israeli government can get to the Iranian nuclear archive, it can also get to citizens who illegally own guns and anyone who commits murder or even fires off rounds in "celebration."
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Many of Israel's Arab citizens feel intense frustration, and their leaders can't do a thing about it. At best, they are in the opposition and sometimes an opposition-within-the-opposition. The government and the decision-makers haven't managed to create any change, either.
Next week, Israel Hayom will be co-sponsoring a conference focusing on crime in Israel that will focus on governability in the Negev, the Galilee, and other areas. The conference, which will be broadcast online on Monday, will bring together ministers, MKs, local authority leaders, senior functionaries, security and defense officials, civil society organizations, journalists, and activists.
The goal of the event is to hold an orderly discussion about governability and sovereignty, and make them prominent items on the national agenda. The organizers say that the best way of doing that is to hold round tables that will foster direct dialogue between the various entities involved. At the conference, participants will be presented with facts, figures, and personal stories from farmers and residents of these areas about the situation on the ground, and officials will discuss possible options to improve it.
