Organized crime poses strategic threat to Israel
The ratio of Arab-to-Jewish homicides expanded from 4:1 in 2015 to 14:1 by late 2025.
Israel Today
Feb 15, 2026
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.
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