gun violence

Eilat Maoz (courtesy)

PODCAST: The making of Israel’s Palestinian mafias

Eilat Maoz breaks down how organized crime took over Arab communities — and why it reveals the contradictions of Israeli state power.

By +972 Magazine September 24, 2026

Israeli soldiers inspect a Palestinian car in the West Bank city of Hebron, August 13, 2024. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

Under Israel’s watch, Palestinian gangs are sowing chaos in the West Bank

By turning a blind eye to armed criminals while constraining Palestinian police, Israel is ‘engineering lawlessness’ to deepen its control over the territory.

By Sami Sawalmeh August 25, 2026

Israeli security forces at the scene of an explosion in Ramle, Sept. 12, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Why Palestinians in Israel believe crime is a ‘strategic project of the state’

Amid an epidemic of gang violence, activists and experts see Israel's deliberate inaction as part of a campaign to dismantle Palestinian society from within.

By Baker Zoubi May 27, 2025

Latest

Miami Beach Police along Ocean Drive, in South Beach, Miami, Jan. 16, 2016. (Adam Fagen/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

When a Jew shot by another Jew cries ‘Death to Arabs!’

Mizrahim can continue to deny their identity, but they cannot shed their skin. The Miami shooter’s bullets remind them: after all, you’re Arab too.

By Orly Noy February 19, 2025

Family and friends attend the funeral of five Palestinians who were shot to death in the Bedouin town of Basmat Tab’un, September 29, 2023. (Flash90)

Abandoned by the state, Palestinian citizens of Israel face record crime wave

Amid a proliferation of weapons and worsening police negligence since Oct. 7, violence by criminal organizations in Arab towns has reached historic levels.

By Baker Zoubi May 30, 2024

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir attends a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, July 30, 2023. (Marc Israel Sellem/POOL)

‘Sorry Mohammad’: What’s behind Ben Gvir’s apartheid honesty?

The national security minister’s brazen remarks are simply an expression of what this government was elected to do: rip the mask off Jewish supremacy.

By Edo Konrad August 25, 2023

Baladna youth activists. (Maria Zreiq)

The Palestinian group building power through youth

Baladna head Nidaa Nassar explains how the Haifa-based NGO is raising a generation of Palestinians to overcome their fragmentation and erasure.

By Vera Sajrawi June 21, 2023

Mourners at the funeral of 29-year-old Naeem Marjiyeh and 15-year-old Rami Marjiyeh in the the Catholic Church in the town of Yafa an-Nasariyye. The two were murdered, among three others, in a criminal shooting. June 9, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

‘Mama, are we going to die soon?’ Arab educators grapple with spiking violence

Lacking state support, three Palestinian citizens of Israel share what parents and schools can do to help children exposed to pervasive gun crime.

By Vera Sajrawi June 20, 2023

Members of the Palestinian community protest against the violence in their community, outside the Knesset, May 21, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Why Israeli police aren’t the solution to Palestinian crime

The fixation on policing has funneled us into a debate that avoids the real roots of the crisis of gun violence among Palestinian citizens of Israel.

By Amjad Iraqi June 18, 2023

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir at the scene where five people were shot dead in the Arab Town of Yafa an-Naseriyye, northern Israel, June 8, 2023. (Fadi Amun/Flash90)

The return of Israel’s military rule over Palestinian citizens

Long wielded in the occupied territories, administrative detention could be the next tool in Ben Gvir's arsenal of repression against Palestinian citizens.

By Orly Noy June 13, 2023

Funeral of Diyar Omari, a 19-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel from the village of Sandala, who was shot dead by Jewish citizen Denis Mukin near the community settlement of Gan Ner, May 7, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

‘He thought killing an Arab was easy’

Palestinian citizens decry the shooting of Diyar Omari by a Jewish Israeli, blaming racist politicians for fomenting a trigger-happy atmosphere.

By Baker Zoubi and Oren Ziv May 8, 2023

Police and medical personnel at the scene investigate the murder of a woman in her 30's that was shot dead, in Lod, July 26, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

How crime in Lydd became a front for the Israeli right’s agenda

Palestinian residents say that politicians' attempts to link crime with nationalism avoids addressing the discriminatory reality in the 'mixed city.'

By Baker Zoubi February 22, 2023

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir at the scene of a shooting attack in Neve Yaakov, Jerusalem, January 27, 2023. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Why Ben Gvir wants more guns on the streets

The Israeli far right sees widespread gun ownership as a means of enforcing racial supremacy — a lesson taken straight out of the American playbook.

By Nate Orbach February 1, 2023