The ratio of Arab-to-Jewish homicides expanded from 4:1 in 2015 to 14:1 by late 2025.
On Sunday, synchronized protest convoys involving hundreds of
vehicles departed from the Galilee, the Triangle and the Negev,
converging on the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.
The demonstration was triggered by a surge in violence during the
first week of February that resulted in several fatalities in
broad-daylight shootings across several Arab municipalities. The
protesters’ central demand was the reclassification of the crime wave as
a “National Emergency” to address a homicide rate that, in early 2026,
had reached a frequency of nearly one victim per day.
The Sunday demonstrations were followed by sporadic protests and acts
of civil disobedience across Israel, including blocking highways, in an
attempt to pressure the Cabinet into authorizing broader resources to
combat organized crime syndicates in Arab communities. In response to
the growing protests, President Isaac Herzog recognized
the surge of violence as a “national burden” and said that “turning a
blind eye” is no longer an option for the state, in a recent statement.
The crime wave
The recent protest movement is fueled by an unprecedented escalation
in violence that has claimed 45 lives since the start of the year. This
trajectory follows a record-breaking 2025, which concluded with 252
recorded homicides in the Arab sector, the highest annual figure on
record and a nearly 250% increase from the 71 homicides recorded in
2018.
While Israel’s overall murder rate is around 1.6 per 100,000
inhabitants annually, among Arabs the rate is around 12 per 100,000,
higher than El Salvador’s and on par with Venezuela’s. While the
homicide rate for Jewish Israelis has remained relatively flat, the
ratio of Arab-to-Jewish homicides has expanded from 4:1 in 2015 to 14:1
by late 2025.
A recent report for the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security
(JISS) emphasized that at this scale, crime in the Arab community has
transitioned from a local issue to a national threat. “Serious crime,
and especially organized crime within the Arab sector, has become a
strategic threat to the rule of law, national security, and the
country’s social fabric,” the report noted.
This crime wave is increasingly characterized by organized syndicate
activity. In 2025, the Israel Police seized more than5,600 illegal
firearms across the country, with approximately 88% of all homicides in
the Arab sector involving firearms. There are an estimated 400,000
illegal firearms in circulation in Israel. Furthermore, the violence has
begun to claim a higher percentage of “innocent bystanders,” estimated
at 10-12% of victims in 2025, and a record 23 female victims.
The crisis is primarily centered in the north, which accounted for
57% (141 victims) of the previous year’s total, followed by the Triangle
and central regions at 28%. The demographic impact is concentrated
among the “youth bulge,” with victims aged 18 to 30 accounting for
approximately 50% of all fatalities.
Despite the scale of the violence, the clearance rate for murders in
the Arab sector remains historically low, hovering between 10% and 15%,
compared to over 70% in the Jewish sector.
The ongoing protest movement highlights a significant divergence
between the public demand for law enforcement and the internal societal
barriers to its implementation. According to a recent JISS report,
approximately 70% of witnesses in criminal cases within the Arab sector
refuse to cooperate with police investigations. This “wall of silence”
is compounded by a deep-seated crisis of confidence; the 2025 Israel
Democracy Institute report on public security found that trust in the
police among Arab citizens has collapsed to just 19%, with 40% of the
population expressing “no trust at all” in the institution.
This refusal to engage with authorities is often driven by a fear of
immediate retaliation, as criminal syndicates frequently target those
who provide testimony. Within many communities, this has fostered a
culture of silence where cooperation with the state is viewed as a
significant personal risk, thereby significantly reducing law
enforcement’s capacity to bring successful indictments to court. This
dynamic creates a situation in which massive street protests demand
police intervention while, on the ground, residents often reject the
infrastructure or the cooperation necessary for enforcement.
Organized crime in the Arab sector
The violence within Israel’s Arab society is the byproduct of a
sophisticated organizational hierarchy dominated by the “Big Five,” a
group of major crime families—the Hariri, Abu Latif, Jarushi, Bakri and
Qarajah clans. Between them, they control vast swaths of the illegal
market in the north and the Triangle regions.
These organizations have transitioned from disparate street gangs
into structured organizational hierarchies that provide a parallel
“justice system.” This system resolves internal conflicts and land
disputes through tribal arbitration, establishing the syndicates as de
facto sovereigns that bypass the Israeli judiciary. This institutional
power was notably demonstrated during the 2024 municipal elections, when
dozens of candidates and officials were targeted by violence or
threats, and in several towns, candidates were forced to withdraw or
required 24/7 security.
The operational reach of these families is supported by their
transition into the legitimate economy through front companies in
sectors such as transportation, scaffolding and private security.
In February 2025, the Israel Police conducted a massive raid on the
Abu Latif organization, resulting in 36 arrests for the systematic use
of violence to dominate state-issued tenders worth hundreds of millions
of shekels.
This infiltration is bolstered by a predatory shadow banking system
where interest rates can reach 10%-15% per month, leading to a
“debt-slavery” loop. To sustain this growth, the syndicates employ a
highly effective recruitment strategy, offering young at-risk men
starting salaries that consistently out-pay other employment
opportunities in the communities.
A major influx of military-grade weapons further props up the
criminal system. Criminal organizations have moved beyond small arms to
using grenade launchers, weaponized drones and standard-issue IDF
explosives stolen from military bases, smuggled from Egypt or Jordan, or
purchased from underground factories in Judea and Samaria. Throughout
2025 and into early 2026, these groups have deployed IEDs (improvised
explosive devices) for daylight car bombings in dense urban centers.
Deputy Commissioner Maoz Ben-Shabo, the Israel Police’s project coordinator for the Arab sector, highlighted this shift in his testimony to the Knesset National Security Committee
on Jan. 29. “The issue of weapons is at the core of criminal
organizations. … Today, every organization has several weapons suppliers
who provide them with everything—missiles, grenades, rifles or
explosive devices,” Ben-Shabo noted.
The criminal black market
The financial foundation of organized crime in the Arab sector is
built upon a vast “non-observed economy” that the Ministry of Finance
estimates is worth tens of billions of shekels annually.
A primary driver of this shadow economy is the systematic extraction of khawa,
or protection money, which the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and
Security estimates nets criminal organizations approximately 2 billion
shekels ($650 million) each year. This unofficial tax has become so
entrenched that in regions such as the Galilee, it is frequently treated
as a fixed overhead cost for construction and commercial development.
The prevalence of this black market is reflected in local financial
behavior. According to the Bank of Israel, more than 50% of transactions
in Arab localities are conducted in cash, compared to roughly 12% in
Jewish urban centers, facilitating a cash-only ecosystem that shields
syndicate revenue from state oversight.
This economic structure creates a significant tax-revenue gap that
directly hampers municipal development. In several Arab municipalities,
property tax collection rates remain below 30%, leaving local councils
without the necessary funds for infrastructure or municipal policing.
This shortfall is compounded by the widespread use of currency exchange
shops, or “change” spots, which the Israel Tax Authority identifies as
primary pipelines for laundering illicit funds into clean assets.
Furthermore, the presence of these syndicates distorts the local real
estate market. Crime families frequently purchase land and property in
cash to launder profits, driving up prices and making legitimate home
ownership inaccessible.
The infiltration of the legitimate economy by laundering networks has
led to a “resource paradox” where the community pays significantly more
in criminal extortion than it does in the taxes required to fund public
services. This dynamic reached an initial peak in August 2023, when the
Finance Ministry froze 200 million shekels (about $65 million) in
municipal balancing grants. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
justified the freeze by stating, “Organized crime relies on money, and
most of this money, which is the State of Israel’s, instead of serving
Arab Israeli citizens, reaches the same protection collectors.”
By early 2026, the implementation of broader development funds under Government Resolution 550,
the 30 billion shekel ($9.7 billion), five-year plan for the Arab
sector, remains a point of intense budgetary friction. The state’s
difficulty in injecting resources without inadvertently strengthening
crime syndicates was underscored by a December 2025 Cabinet decision to
divert 220 million shekels (around $71 million) from Resolution 550’s
socioeconomic programs directly to the Israel Police and Shin Bet.
Social Equality Minister May Golan defended this
divestment, saying the funds would “establish a ‘groundbreaking’ program
to address ‘the root of the problem,’ which will both supplement and
strengthen the existing program to combat crime in the Arab community.”
The causes of the violence
Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Winner, a research fellow at
the Israel Center for Grand Strategy, attributed the crisis to
deep-seated sociological drivers that exist independently of state
policy. “It has to be understood that there is a deep underlying
cultural reason which is causing a lot of the violence,” he told JNS.
“Blood guilt and family feuds are an institution that is hundreds of
years old in Arab society,” he added.
Winner further explained that “murder for your family’s honor is
considered an important responsibility,” meaning that individual
disputes frequently spiral into generational cycles of retribution.
Winner highlighted the scale of this issue, noting that a recent case
where more than 20 murders were attributed to one clan conflict.
Winner also pointed to a recent void in the criminal landscape as a
significant driver of the current wave. “Several years ago, the police
made a serious effort to break up Jewish organized crime in Israel,”
which inadvertently “created a vacuum that Arab crime families have
slowly filled,” he explained.
These organizations have since “grown in power and strength,”
transitioning from local gangs into the dominant syndicates currently
active. According to Winner, this unchecked expansion is now reaching a
breaking point, “resulting in violence spilling out onto the street.”
The current security climate has further strained the state’s
capacity to intervene. Winner noted that “over the past two years,
Israel has been dealing with serious threats in Gaza, in the north and
in Judea and Samaria,” a shift that “has also taken resources away from
the fight against the crime families.”
Consequently, the domestic crisis was “ignored because of more
serious threats,” creating a permissive environment for syndicates to
expand. This lack of oversight “allowed the crime families to grow
without serious pressure,” leaving the police in a reactive posture.
The syndicates have achieved a level of technical sophistication that
often exceeds that of the state. Winner observed that “the crime
families have adapted themselves very successfully to new technologies,”
using “drones or signal interference devices or faster cars” to carry
out operations.
This “tech-gap” has altered the lethality of the organizations, as
“the crime organizations are surpassing the police in their
technological resources.” This strategic edge “makes them a lot more
efficient and a lot more dangerous,” allowing them to evade traditional
surveillance and outpace law enforcement’s response capabilities.
Winner added that the technological gap is being exacerbated by
restrictions placed on police, preventing them from using certain
surveillance methods to curb crime.
Police Commissioner Daniel Levi underlined the
importance of the technological gap in worsening the crime problem
during a situational assessment on Thursday. Law enforcement cannot do
its job when “our hands are tied, our ears are muffled, and our eyes are
blindfolded,” Levi said.
Winner added, “One of the most important factors is that [the
judicial system] does not allow the police to use advanced investigative
tools, such as spyware, and they oppose the integration of the Shin Bet
into the fight against the phenomenon.”
Finally, Winner concluded that a major source of the issue lay with
the state prosecution. Winner characterized the Israeli legal apparatus
as “a completely sick justice system that was failing to keep criminals
off the street even once they were caught.”
He argued that the judiciary had become paralyzed by “political
questions like judicial reform and conflicts with the government,” which
caused the “basic work of prosecuting criminals and making sure that
police arrests actually lead to jail time” to languish. This lack of
deterrence created a revolving door for violent offenders.
