Toward an Anti-colonial Approach to Violent Crime among ’48 Palestinians

Abstract

This essay focuses on the rise in violent crime among ’48 Palestinians (also known as Palestinians with Israeli citizenship). Criminal violence, the authors argue, is inextricably linked to Israeli settler colonialism. It is the product of decades of colonization, land dispossession, and social, economic, and political exclusion, and it must be understood to lie at the intersection of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. The authors posit that violent crime not only works in the service of settler-colonial interests but is, in itself, a modality of settler-colonial violence—part of the racial eliminatory logic of settler colonialism. They assert that the Israeli settler-colonial state is the source of the crime crisis in ‘48 Palestinian communities, a form of violence that is an integral part of Israel’s war on Palestinians. The solution, accordingly, lies not in calls for state intervention or more policing, but in the broader project of decolonization and the dismantlement of Israeli settler colonialism.

Keywords:

• Palestinian citizens
• ’48 Palestinians
• settler colonialism
• racial capitalism
• violent crime
• protest
• resistance
• Israel
• Palestine

Rising crime and gun violence dominate ’48 Palestinians’ lives (also known as Palestinians with Israeli citizenship).¹ Every day, there is news of another shooting and more casualties, and almost every Palestinian town and city from the Naqab to the Jalil (Galilee) has been affected. ’48ers live in a constant state of anxiety and fear with the complete absence of personal and communal safety; they are targeted in their homes and can be shot in the streets and public spaces, including shopping areas, cafés, and local municipal buildings. They can even be shot outside holy places and near police stations. No one is spared in these shootings—children, women, men, and the elderly—as violence targets both those who are directly involved in organized crime and those who are not.²

Several incidents of violent crime have shaken ’48 Palestinian communities in 2023, indicating that criminal organizations have become increasingly emboldened. In June, a shooter opened fire in a carwash in the town of Yafa an-Naseriyye (Yafet al-Nasra), killing five people in what has been described as a massacre.³ During that week alone, thirteen people were killed.⁴ In August, the director general of the Tira municipality was murdered.⁵ One day later, a mayoral candidate in Abu Snan was killed, along with three members of his family.⁶ And in September, five members of one family, including two children—were shot dead in their home in Basmat Tab‘un.⁷ Thousands attended the funerals and protested the surge in crime—and not for the first time.

Israel presents crime among ’48ers as a cultural pathology that is rooted in Arab/Muslim barbarism and savagery. For example, in 2019, former Minister of Public Security Gilad Ardan stated that “Arab society is a very violent society. It has to do with culture.”⁸ In 2022, former Israeli Police Commissioner Assaf Hefetz said that the rise in crime could be blamed primarily on “the leadership of the Arab society and the subculture of killing.”⁹ Israel uses this classic, racist colonial narrative to shift the conversation from the political to the cultural, and thus, to divert responsibility for crime from the Israeli state to Palestinian society.

Indeed, the facts tell a very different story. Despite Israeli claims, crime and gun violence in ’48 Palestinian communities were never significant issues historically. Between 1980 and 2000, only 150 Palestinians were killed in crime-related violence.¹⁰ The numbers began to rise in 2000 in the wake of the second intifada. Between 2000 and 2017, a total of 1,236 Palestinians were killed.¹¹ Since then, there has been a sharp increase in homicides: from 67 in 2018¹² to 91 in 2019,¹³ 113 in 2019,¹⁴ 126 in 2021,¹⁵ and 111 in 2022.¹⁶ That number more than doubled in 2023, with 244 Palestinians killed—compared with 299 homicides among the general population.¹⁷ Although Palestinians comprise only 20 percent of Israel’s citizenry, they now account for the majority of all homicide victims.¹⁸ In 2023, only 8 percent of these cases—a total of 25—were solved.¹⁹

Criminal violence, we argue, is inextricably linked to Israeli settler colonialism. It is the product of decades of colonization, land dispossession, social, economic, and political exclusion, and systemic discrimination that have left generations of young Palestinians with little hope for a dignified life or livelihood. Furthermore, it must be understood as located at the intersection of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, serving the Israeli regime’s interests—a facet of Israeli governance that explains its role in fueling the violence by turning a blind eye to it. Violent crime, we suggest, thus not only works in service of settler-colonial interests but is, in itself, a modality of settler-colonial violence—part of the racial eliminatory logic of settler colonialism.

The Israeli settler-colonial state, we assert, is itself the source of the crime crisis in ’48 Palestinian communities, a form of violence that is an integral part of Israel’s war on Palestinians. It works to weaken Palestinian collectivity and cohesion, and to shatter Palestinian society from within, turning Palestinian towns from places of security and shelter, community life, and political mobilization to spaces of brute violence. In doing so, violent crime undermines ’48 Palestinians’ ability to resist settler colonialism by miring them in a daily struggle for personal safety. The solution, accordingly, lies not in calls for state intervention or more policing; this would only result in more Israeli oppression and violence and further tightening the state’s control over Palestinians’ lives. Rather, the solution lies in the broader project of decolonization and the dismantlement of Israeli settler colonialism.

Crime at the Intersection of Settler Colonialism and Racial Capitalism

Addressing rising crime in ’48 Palestinian communities through the prism of state neglect, inaction, and under-policing overlooks the role of the Israeli state—as a settler-colonial and racial regime—in driving the crime. Palestinian political leaders have noted that “criminal gangs are shielded by the [Israeli] intelligence services” and that “many criminals have immunity because they also work with the police.”²⁰ A senior Israeli police official stated that “most of the criminals who lead serious crimes in the Arab sector are Shabak [the Israel Security Agency] collaborators. In this situation, the hands of the police are tied because the collaborators enjoy impunity.”²¹ In fact, Israeli officials themselves admit that the police turn a blind eye to the crime in return for intelligence information—and acquiring that intelligence is their priority.²²

The High Follow Up Committee, the official body representing ’48 Palestinians, has accused the government, police, and criminal organizations of collusion: “the authorities know very well the source of the weapons that make their way into Palestinian towns.”²³ Indeed, a Knesset report estimates that 400,000 weapons and firearms circulate among the 2,037,000 Palestinians in Israel, and that 70 percent of those weapons can be traced to the Israeli army.²⁴ It is well-known among ’48ers that there is a tacit understanding between Israel and the criminal organizations that as long as violent crime does not spill into Israeli-Jewish towns, and as long as the weapons are not used against Israeli Jews or the state, Israel has no interest in eradicating crime in Palestinian communities. The state is not even interested in seizing the weapons. In 2022, for example, the police confiscated only a few hundred of the nearly half a million firearms.²⁵

For decades, Israel has been actively fueling intercommunal conflict between different Palestinian ethnic and religious groups as part of its policy of fragmenting Palestinian society to suppress political mobilization.²⁶ The assumption behind this colonial divide-and-rule policy is that the more the society is divided, the more it is preoccupied with internal issues and thus, the less likely it will confront and resist the state. Allowing crime to flood Palestinian towns in ’48 follows this logic. As Palestinian human rights lawyer Shahrazad Odeh argues, it is a colonial strategy and part of Israel’s broader efforts “to depoliticize the community.”²⁷

The second intifada that erupted in 2000 was a crucial juncture in violent crime in ’48 communities, with mass protests sweeping through Palestinian cities and towns. Alarmed by the collective expression of national identity among ’48ers, Israel intensified its political repression while permitting crime to flourish. In fact, when Israel declared war on organized crime in Jewish society during the 2000s and successfully eradicated Jewish crime cartels, it simultaneously allowed Palestinian cartels to fill the void—provided that they limited their operations to Palestinian communities. This trend has persisted, and today, more ’48ers are convicted for politically related activity than for criminal activity.²⁸

That said, it is difficult to assess the impact of the October 2023 war on Gaza, ongoing at the time of this writing, on violent crime in ’48 Palestine. On the one hand, evidence shows that 2023 was the bloodiest year,²⁹ with an average of twenty-eight casualties each month between July and September.³⁰ On the other, for five days after October 7, no killings were recorded, and a total of nineteen and fourteen casualties were reported in October and November, respectively. While Israeli police and security forces filled the streets of Palestinian towns in the first days of the war, the goal was political repression, not combating crime. Still, the crime rate dropped in the early period of the war and rose again to twenty casualties in December as police presence decreased. It is important to note, however, that the only reason ’48 communities witnessed a brief decrease in violent crime in late 2023 is because criminals knew Israeli security forces would not tolerate any kind of armed activity. Moreover, they knew that Israeli forces could easily mistake them for Palestinian armed fighters and shoot at will. Early in the war, Israeli police shot four armed ’48 Palestinians who were on their way to commit crimes unrelated to the war.³¹

In order to make sense of this twisted Israeli logic of allowing violent crime in Palestinian communities, violent crime must be understood as lying at the intersection of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. The relationship between the two is intimate:

Racial capitalism is colonial capitalism, especially where settler and imperial thefts of land, the production of hierarchies of global space, and the expropriation of labor occur by means of recursive processes that require possession and rights in order to produce dispossession and rightlessness.³²

In the Israeli context, colonial racial capitalism and settler capital accumulation have been predicated on land dispossession, the destruction of the Palestinian economy, and the economic exclusion and exploitation of Palestinians. Baladna, the Haifa-based Association for Arab Youth, has analyzed violent crime through a political lens, centering the role of settler colonialism and neoliberalism, and challenging the liberal focus on civil discrimination and inadequate policing. In the most comprehensive study of the phenomenon so far, Baladna argues that “decades of colonial policies have produced multiple social crises in the Palestinian society in Israel, amongst the most damaging of which are interpersonal violence and organized crime.”³³

After the Nakba, the Palestinians who remained in their homeland were placed under Israeli occupation and military rule, and though it officially ended in 1966, ’48ers have remained inferior citizens of the Jewish state.³⁴ They have been treated as colonial subjects of a settler-colonial state whose mission continues to be the dispossession of what is left of their land and the destruction of what remains of their local economy.³⁵ Indeed, since the Nakba, Israel has expropriated most of the land that belonged to ’48 Palestinians (and all of the land and property of expelled Palestinian refugees), leaving them with less than 3 percent of what had previously been theirs.³⁶ Moreover, Palestinian towns now exist on a fraction of the land they once owned. The Palestinian city of Umm al-Fahm, for example, lies on only 15,000 of its original 140,000 dunums.³⁷ A similar fate befell most—if not all—Palestinian towns.

As Palestinians rely on land for their livelihood, this has had a devastating impact. Israel destroyed Palestinian agriculture and industries such as dairy and quarrying, favoring Jewish producers and companies instead.³⁸ Through zoning and other restrictive measures, Israel continues to deny Palestinian communities the possibility of securing economic power and prosperity.³⁹ Palestinians, as a result, have become entirely dependent on the Israeli economy and labor market. They have been proletarianized as low-wage labor and forced into the service and construction industries.⁴⁰

The loss of land has had social implications as well. The land (al-ard) and the ancestral villages and towns (al-balad) are important aspects of Palestinian identity and form the basis of community life, communal support, and personal and collective safety. They also serve as the basis for political organizing. Israel’s confiscation of land has suffocated Palestinian towns and turned them into densely populated spaces with no prospects for development or expansion. This has created fertile ground for familial and community tensions. Significantly, land scarcity—the result of land dispossession—has generated soaring land prices. As land has become unaffordable for younger generations, disputes over it have become especially lethal for those struggling to survive in their ancestral towns and lands.

This is to say that Israeli settler-colonial racial capitalism has taken the form of a violent process of de-development and impoverishment, a process that was hastened with the neoliberal restructuring of the Israeli economy since the 1980s. A range of studies have shown that Palestinians consistently rank lowest among Israel’s citizenry in rates of poverty, education, health, life expectancy, employment, income, welfare services, and well-being. While a small segment of Palestinians benefitted from the neoliberal turn, the socioeconomic gaps between Israeli Jews and Palestinians drastically increased. Poverty rates among Palestinians skyrocketed, from 35 percent in the 1990s⁴¹ to 53 percent in 2023,⁴² with 57.8 percent of children now living below the poverty line.⁴³ Income gaps also grew, the net income of Jewish households is 51 percent higher than that of Palestinian households.⁴⁴ As poverty rises, Israel continues to erode social safety nets. The budget allocation for social welfare services is 50 percent less for Palestinians than for Israeli Jews. Likewise, Israel invests less in Palestinian schools and students than it does in their Jewish equivalents, and the mean level of higher education of Palestinians is one-third that of Israeli Jews.⁴⁵

The ongoing combination of neoliberalism and settler colonialism, Baladna suggests, has meant that “the weaker classes were neglected, and their children became more vulnerable to violence and crime.”⁴⁶ One-third of ’48 Palestinians between the ages of 18 and 24 do not participate in employment, education, or training—double the rate for Israeli Jews and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average.⁴⁷ Many of these young Palestinians thus have few prospects for a better future, making membership in a criminal organization an alternative means of attaining not only an income, but also self-worth and social status.⁴⁸

Indeed, criminal organizations fill both a social and an economic role, with some also having become financial resources for many economically underprivileged Palestinians who are excluded from the Israeli banking system. Membership in a group provides them with high-interest loans in the black market, thereby driving families and youth into crushing debt that creates relationships of dependency. Fundamentally, the exclusions from social and economic opportunities that ’48 Palestinians face are inextricable from the daily structural forms of Israeli settler-colonial racism and violence that impact every aspect of their lives—political, social, economic, and cultural.

The Hirakat as a Model for Palestinian Resistance to Israeli Settler-Colonial Violence

’48 Palestinians disagree on how best to understand and respond to the surge in violent crime in their communities. Some civil society groups, such as the Abraham Initiatives, and some Palestinian public officials, including mayors, have advocated for liberal modalities of intervention like calling on the Israeli police to protect civilians by confiscating weapons, investing in effective police enforcement, increasing police presence in Palestinian communities, installing cameras in public spaces, and focusing on solving homicide cases. Some have even called for involving the Shabak—the logic being that if the Shabak is capable of getting to anyone, it will also be able to catch criminals.⁴⁹ Others, especially among the grassroots movements in cities and towns, have taken a more political approach, seeing in the state and the police the root cause of crime rather than its solution. They frame crime as a political issue, linking it to settler colonialism and racial domination.⁵⁰

In recent years, popular protests calling for security and protection—many of them sporadic and spontaneous, arising in response to specific incidents that shake their communities—have erupted in Palestinian communities. Between January and April 2021, however, we saw the emergence of something different: an organized popular movement led by a younger generation of activists. Weekly demonstrations were held in many cities and towns, including Umm al-Fahm, Tamra, Jaffa, Qalansawe, Basmat Tab‘un, Nazareth, Sakhnin, Kabul, Kafr Qara, Shefa-Amr, Jaljulia, Taybeh, Haifa, Nahf, Baqa al-Gharbiyye, al-Fureidis, and Kafr Kanna.⁵¹ Thousands mobilized against increased violence and rising crime rates.

Al-Hirak al-Fahmawi, or the Umm al-Fahm movement—in one of the largest Palestinian cities that has been gravely afflicted by crime—is a particularly important case and a model that has inspired mobilization in other communities. The Hirak is a coalition of activists and political groups that have organized collectively to demand the right to live in safety and security. It aims to mobilize residents against the role of the police in driving violence.⁵² During the early months of 2021, the Hirak organized weekly protests and a total of twelve demonstrations. The protests were held during Friday prayers, and each hosted a different sheikh who delivered the sermon on a topic related to violence and crime.

The Hirak engaged Palestinians widely. It launched a campaign on Facebook with the hashtag #الجمعة-نازلين (on Friday, we will take to the streets), as well as posters with slogans such as “Aren’t you scared it will be your turn?,” “Until when will you stay at home?,” and “Don’t hide.” Seeking to broaden community involvement, it organized community cleaning days to prepare the town square of Umm al-Fahm for the demonstrations, and held open meetings in the community center to discuss how to sustain and grow the movement. The Hirak was committed to fostering a collective voice. In February 2021, at the height of the protests, when the chief commander of the Umm al-Fahm police station said that “the cause of violence is the culture of the Fahmawi society,” the Hirak drafted a petition calling for his resignation and installed booths around town where residents could add their names.⁵³

On February 25, the towns of ‘Ara and ‘Ar‘ara held protests as well, with hirakat qutriyya (national movements) calling on the public “to take to the streets” (‘al-shar‘). The discourse was political: “because Zionist colonization is responsible for the crime that we are subjected to daily as Palestinians, and because shutting down police stations in Arab towns has become a duty.”⁵⁴ Another demonstration organized by al-Hirak al-Fahmawi was held on February 26. The police responded by firing rubber bullets, spraying tear gas, and detaining and brutally assaulting protesters, including the mayor of Umm al-Fahm.⁵⁵

The week following the protests, the various hirakat continued to expand their activities at the national level. They organized an eighth protest, which they named the “Friday of Rage” (jum‘at al-ghadab),⁵⁶ and issued a series of five brochures in which they contextualized violence and crime in Palestinian society politically within Israeli settler colonialism and racism. The first brochure focused on the establishment of fifty-one Israeli police stations in Palestinian communities and the recruitment of Palestinians to the police force. It linked this to Israel’s attempts to suppress nationalism and resistance among ’48ers in the aftermath of the second intifada.⁵⁷ The second brochure traced how crime and the circulation of weapons actually grew with the increase of police stations in Palestinian towns.⁵⁸

The third brochure challenged racist Israeli discourse that blames violence and crime on Palestinian culture, comparing crime rates between ’48ers and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.⁵⁹ This brochure insisted on Palestinian peoplehood and referred to ’48 Palestinian communities as “the occupied interior” (al-dakhil al-muhtal). The fourth and fifth brochures took to task the Israeli police’s claim that they cannot solve crime or provide protection because they lack both evidence and the cooperation of residents. Rather, the brochures argued, the problem is one not of inability but of collusion between Israeli police and crime cartels.⁶⁰

The hirakat of early 2021 thus confirmed that solving the crime crisis must fundamentally be a political endeavor, one that cannot be separated from the larger Palestinian struggle to dismantle the racist, settler-colonial, and capitalistic pillars of Israeli governance that perpetuate the violence. Indeed, toward the end of March 2021, with escalating violence in al-Aqsa Mosque compound and Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, the discourse among ’48ers grew increasingly political. It culminated in a protest held in Umm al-Fahm on April 2, before the eruption of the Unity Intifada in May 2021. The protest, named “The Friday of the Land and the Human Being” (jum‘at al-ard wa al-’nsan) in honor of Land Day, represented the complete intertwining of the social and the political in the struggle to end violent crime in ’48 communities.

Toward an Anti-colonial Approach to Violent Crime in ’48 Communities

During the Unity Intifada, thousands of ’48 Palestinians took to the streets in tens of cities and towns, alongside Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the rest of the West Bank, Gaza, and the shatat (diaspora). The protests, signified by anti-colonial rage, must be situated within the hirakat protests that preceded them between January and April 2021. The connection between the hirakat protests of early 2021 and the Unity Intifada that erupted a month later often goes unacknowledged. But the anti-colonial fervor across ’48 communities during the intifada, and the level of Israeli repression that ensued, cannot be separated from the political resistance the hirakat had initiated weeks prior. This wave of rage must also be included in the longer historical trajectory of anti-colonial resistance among ’48 Palestinians that has centered settler colonialism, Palestinian unity, and Palestinian liberation.⁶¹

Like previous Palestinian protests confronting the settler-colonial structures that drive criminal violence, protesters during the Unity Intifada targeted their rage at the Israeli state and the police, not the community. As such, and as we have argued elsewhere, it is not a coincidence that, in the months after the intifada, Israel treated the May 2021 protests—which were fundamentally an expression of anti-colonial resistance to settler colonialism—as being rooted in rising crime. It invested in “securitizing crime (treating crime as a security issue) and criminalizing resistance (treating political activism and mobilization as a criminal issue).”⁶² So long as Israeli security and police forces continue to foment and turn a blind eye to violent crime in ’48 Palestinian communities, the anti-colonial rage witnessed among ’48 Palestinians throughout 2021 will continue to inform their resistance to the settler-colonial, racial, and capitalistic structures that perpetuate the violence.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lana Tatour

Lana Tatour is a lecturer/assistant professor in global development at the School of Social Science, University of New South Wales, Australia. She is currently completing a book provisionally titled Ambivalent Resistance: Palestinians in Israel and the Liberal Politics of Settler Colonialism and Human Rights. She is also coediting a book titled Race and the Question of Palestine. Adan Tatour is an activist and a lawyer. She previously worked at Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Tatour was part of the Lawyers for Defending the Uprising Detainees group that provided legal counsel to detainees in Haifa during the Unity Intifada.

Notes

1 A poll from 2019 shows that at least 80 percent of ’48ers are concerned with crime violence. The numbers are likely to be closer to 100 percent today. Ibrahim Husseini, “Israel ‘Complicit’ in Perpetuating Crime in Palestinian Towns: Community Leaders,” New Arab, May 30, 2023, https://www.newarab.com/news/palestinians-within-1948-borders-launch-anti-crime-campaign.

2 In this essay, we focus on crime and violence in ’48 Palestinian society as a modality of Israeli settler-colonial violence. We do so not to absolve ourselves from looking inward into our own society, but to avoid reproducing a liberal and racist approach that displaces the political for the cultural. We recognize that there are other social, political, and economic factors and processes that we do not account for in the analysis, and that class and gender are dimensions that deserve attention. Those issues, however, ought to also be studied in relation to the impact of decades of Israeli settler colonialism, racial domination, and racial capitalism.

3 Shimon Ifergan, “Massacre in Yafa: Five Were Murdered in a Car Wash Business” [in Hebrew], Mako, June 8, 2023, https://www.mako.co.il/men-men_news/Article-3d22deb6f1b9881026.htm. All translations in this essay were done by the authors.

4 Hassan Shaalan and Meir Turgeman, “Massacre at a Car Wash Business, Shooting on a Main Road in the Center: 7 Murdered in One Day of Loss of Control” [in Hebrew], Ynet, June 9, 2023, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/skvzoj1p3.

5 Hassan Shaalan and Meir Turgeman, “The Director General of Tira Municipality Was Shot and Killed near the Police Station in the City” [in Hebrew], Ynet, August 22, 2023, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/r1qdaqbp3.

6 Hassan Shaalan and Yair Kraus, “Quadruple Murder in Abu Snan: Four Were Shot at Point Blank Range, One of Them Is Running for the Local Council Elections” [in Hebrew], Ynet, August 22, 2023, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bkfl4pgtn. Currently, more than half of the heads of local municipalities in Israel that face threats of violence are Palestinians, and many candidates for town councils face intimidation and violence. See Jack Khoury, “A Nazareth Mayoral Candidate Who Was Shot Last Month Is Expected to Announce His Withdrawal from the Race” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, September 16, 2023, https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/local/2023-09-16/ty-article/0000018a-9e59-df78-adca-de79f7d90000?utm_source=App_Share&utm_medium=iOS_Native.

7 “‘State of Emergency’: Six Palestinian Citizens Killed in One Day,” Al Jazeera, September 27, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/27/state-of-emergency-six-palestinian-citizens-of-israel-killed-in-one-day.

8 Hassan Shaalan, “Ardan: ‘Violence in Arab Society–Because of the Culture;’ Odeh: ‘Racism’” [in Hebrew], Ynet, October 7, 2019, https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5603828,00.html.

9 Liran Levy, “The Former Israel Police Commissioner on Violence in Arab Society: ‘The Police Should Not Deter Criminals” [in Hebrew], Ynet, September 6, 2022, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/s1sgq2vlo.

10 Husseini, “Israel ‘Complicit’ in Perpetuating Crime.”

11 Sonia Boulos, “Policing the Palestinian National Minority in Israel: An International Human Rights Perspective,” Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 19, no. 2 (November 2020): 152, https://doi.org/10.3366/hlps.2020.0239.

12 Husseini, “Israel ‘Complicit’ in Perpetuating Crime.”

13 Josh Breiner, “The Police Solved a Fifth of the Murders in Arab Society This Year–Compared to 50% among Jews” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, October 31, 2020, https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/law/2020-10-31/ty-article/.premium/0000017f-e279-d75c-a7ff-fefdc5510000.

14 Husseini, “Israel ‘Complicit’ in Perpetuating Crime.”

15 Josh Breiner, “In the Shadow of the Jump in the Number of Murdered People, the Division for Countering Crime in Arab Society in the Police Will Be Disbanded” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, March 1, 2023, https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/law/2023-03-01/ty-article/.premium/00000186-99b4-dbb2-ab96-b9f534bb0000.

16 Breiner, “In the Shadow of the Jump.”

17 Josh Breiner and Deiaa Haj Yahia, “The Number of Murders in Arab Society in 2023 is More Than Twice as High as Last Year” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, December 31, 2023, https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/law/2023-12-31/ty-article/.premium/0000018c-bc7e-db94-afbd-bc7f24080000.

18 Aaron Boxerman, “Arab Communities Shattered, as Organized Crime Fuels a Skyrocketing Murder Rate,” Times of Israel, December 31, 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-communities-shattered-as-organized-crime-fuels-record-levels-of-bloodshed/; Breiner and Haj Yahia, “The Number of Murders in Arab Society;” Hassan Shaalan, “244 Murdered in Arab Society in 2023, Only 10% of the Cases Were Solved” [in Hebrew], Ynet, January 2, 2024, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bjfwluxda; Violence and Crime among Palestinian Youth in Israel—Factors and Contexts, Baladna: Association for Arab Youth and Coventry University, English Summary, April 20, 2023, 8: “In 2019 alone, the Israeli hospitals documented 15,097 violence-related injuries.”

19 Shaalan, “244 Murdered in Arab Society in 2023.”

20 Husseini, “Israel ‘Complicit’ in Perpetuating Crime.”

21 As quoted in Adan Tatour and Lana Tatour, “The Criminalization and Racialization of Palestinian Resistance to Settler Colonialism,” in The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice, ed. Chris Cunneen et al. (London: Routledge, 2023), 99.

22 Tani Goldstein, “Police Clear Suspicions for Criminal Activities in the Arab Sector in Return for Security Information” [in Hebrew], Zman Israel, October 7, 2019, https://www.zman.co.il/45368/.

23 Eli Ashkenazi and Liran Levy, “‘Feeling a State of Emergency’: Strike in the Arab Sector Following Crime” [in Hebrew], Walla!, October 3, 2019, https://news.walla.co.il/item/3316187.

24 For 2022 data, see Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, “Population of Israel on the Eve of 2023,” news release no. 426/2022, December 29, 2022, https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/mediarelease/pages/2022/population-of-israel-on-the-eve-of-2023.aspx#:∼:text=According%20to%20Central%20Bureau%20of,and%20513%2C000%20Others%20(5.3%25). For statistics on firearms, see Boulos, “Policing the Palestinian National Minority in Israel.”

25 Sharon Kidon and Yishai Shenrav, “We Wrote after the Murder of His Journalist Friend: ‘Where Is the Police? My Children Are Afraid.’ Police Spokesman: ‘We Have Always Dealt with Threats’” [in Hebrew], Ynet, September 5, 2022, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hyu6u11xls?utm_source=ynet.app.ios&utm_term=hyu6u11xls&utm_campaign=general_share&utm_medium=social&utm_content=Header.

26 Magid Shihade, Not Just a Soccer Game: Colonialism and Conflict among Palestinians in Israel (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011).

27 Shahrazad Odeh, “How Crime Became a Cover for Israel to Tighten Control of Palestinian Citizens,” +972 Magazine, December 4, 2020, https://www.972mag.com/crime-palestinian-citizens-israel/.

28 Odeh, “How Crime Became a Cover.”

29 Baladna: Association for Arab Youth, A Statistical Report on Homicides in 2023 [in Arabic], January 17, 2023, https://baladnayouth.org/?mod=articles&ID=8785.

30 Yoav Itie, “A Record Year in the Number of Murdered People in Arab Society: ‘Ben Gvir’s Steps Are a Failure’” [in Hebrew], Walla!, January 11, 2024, https://news.walla.co.il/item/3635119.

31 Deiaa Haj Yahya, “An Unprecedented Outcome for 2023: A Year Full of Murder Crimes in Arab Society” [in Arabic], Arab48, December 31, 2023, https://www.arab48.com/-في-2023-عام-مثقل-بجرائم-القتل-في-المجتمع-العربي محليات/دراسات-وتقارير/31/12/2023/حصيلة-غير-مسبوقة.

32 Colonial Racial Capitalism, ed. Susan Koshy et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022), 7. Emphasis in original.

33 Balanda, Violence and Crime.

34 Lana Tatour, “Citizenship as Domination: Settler Colonialism and the Making of Palestinian Citizenship in Israel,” Arab Studies Journal 27, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 8–39, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3533490; Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, “Citizenship as Accumulation by Dispossession: The Paradox of Settler Colonial Citizenship,” Sociological Theory 40, no. 2 (June 2022): 151–78, https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751221095474.

35 Shira Robinson, Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).

36 Balanda, Violence and Crime, 17.

37 Edward Said, “Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims,” Social Text, no. 1 (Winter 1979): 43, https://doi.org/10.2307/466405.

38 Elia T. Zureik, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1979).

39 Balanda, Violence and Crime, 24.

40 Nimrod Ben Zeev, “‘We Built This Country’: Palestinian Citizens in Israel’s Construction Industry, 1948–73,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 84 (Winter 2020): 10–46, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1650831; Nimrod Ben Zeev, “Toward a History of Dangerous Work and Racialized Inequalities in Twentieth-Century Palestine/Israel,” JPS 51, no.4 (2022), 90, https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2022.2123212; Zureik, The Palestinians in Israel; Sai Englert, “Hebrew Labor without Hebrew Workers: The Histadrut, Palestinian Workers, and the Israeli Construction Industry,” JPS 52, no. 3 (2023): 23–45, https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2023.2244188.

41 Balanda, Violence and Crime, 24.

42 “Over Half of Arab Israeli Households at Risk of Poverty–Report,” i24 News, June 26, 2023, https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/society/1687769118-over-half-of-arab-israeli-households-at-risk-of-poverty-report.

43 Ensherah Khoury and Michal Krumer-Nevo, “Poverty in Arab-Palestinian Society in Israel: Social Work Perspectives before and during COVID-19,” International Social Work 66, no. 1 (January 2023): 117–29, https://doi.org/10.1177/00208728221091125.

44 Khoury and Krumer-Nevo, “Poverty in Arab-Palestinian Society,” 124.

45 Liora Sion, “Innocent Girls, Wicked Women: Interfaith Marriages, Class, and Ethnicity in Israel,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 46, no. 15 (2023): 3385, https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2023.2192302.

46 Balanda, Violence and Crime, 25.

47 Deiaa Haj Yahia, “The Tragedy of Young Israeli Arabs on the Road to Nowhere,” Haaretz, May 14, 2023, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-14/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-young-israeli-arabs-on-a-road-to-nowhere/00000188-0b1a-db03-adbd-2fbec3110000.

48 Balanda, Violence and Crime, 25.

49 Victims of Violence and Crime in Arab Society: Summary of the Year 2023, Abraham Initiatives, December 31, 2023, https://abrahaminitiatives.org.il/2023/12/31/%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%97%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%91%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%93%D7%95%D7%97-%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%9D/; Hassan Shaalan, “Fed up of Resolutions and Fear of Shabak Intervention: Arab Society Is Divided on the Anti-crime Plan” [in Hebrew], Ynet, October 4, 2021, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hyiedpwvy; Hassan Shaalan, “‘Fearing for Our Lives? Of Course. The Criminal Organization? It’s Not Our Job to Fight Them’: Mayors Speak” [in Hebrew], Ynet, July 15, 2023, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hjjruf0y3.

50 Basel Mughrabi, “The Story of Hirak Fahmawi” [in Arabic], Arab48, March 1, 2021, https://www.arab48.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1/%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%AC%D9%84%D8%A9/2021/02/26/%D8%A3%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D8%AD%D9%85-%D9%85%D8%B8%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%B6%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%85%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B1%D8%B7%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B3%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%B9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%B9.

51 Tatour and Tatour, “The Criminalization and Racialization of Palestinian Resistance.”

52 See al-Hirak al-Fahmawi al-Mwowheda, “The United Umm al-Fahm Movement” [in Arabic] Facebook, February 6, 2021, https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0NarkNpXprND7drY2RQy2xX17L88sHgq8KMAdG1q5mApr561e8yStSyrLZUPrpH4jl&id=174130907545104&mibextid=qC1gEa.

53 See al-Hirak al-Fahmawi al-Mwowheda, “Petition against the Chief Commander of the Umm al-Fahm Police Station” [in Arabic], March 1, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/174130907545104/posts/203836911241170/?mibextid=WC7FNe.

54 Al-Hirak al-Fahmawi al-Mwowheda, “For Circulation” [in Arabic], Facebook, February 24, 2021, https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0yBV62e2piDrQENvzeuf2ATfF8uNC7zybgYEuT1TvKf1h4pQoHKYoEsg2Crv23JhUl&id=174130907545104&mibextid=qC1gEa.

55 Deiaa Haj Yahia and ‘Inas Murih, “Umm al-Fahm: Injuries and Arrests in a Demonstration against Crime and the Police” [in Arabic], Arab48, February 26, 2021, https://www.arab48.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1/%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%AC%D9%84%D8%A9/2021/02/26/%D8%A3%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D8%AD%D9%85-%D9%85%D8%B8%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%B6%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%85%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B1%D8%B7%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B3%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%B9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%B9.

56 Al-Hirak al-Fahmawi al-Mwowheda, “‘Ara and ‘Ar‘ara Join the United Frontline” [in Arabic], Facebook, March 3, 2021, https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0HagpGLCeAzKor2S6xS3CVwgnk8aE19yE5NDLQHrrEMNvYVv3aPcGFqNy2j4PpAikl&id=174130907545104&mibextid=qC1gEa.

57 Al-Hirak al-Fahmawi al-Mwowheda, “‘Report 1’: The Police Is the Root of the Problem” [in Arabic], Facebook, March 20, 2021, https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0QacxiQuq5h6xErNLCevABJqxFuXefqyCei5tAj85no7TJKubDWTRCsurgxUedgTnl&id=174130907545104&mibextid=qC1gEa.

58 Al-Hirak al-Fahmawi al-Mwowheda, “‘Report 2’: The Police Is the Root of the Problem” [in Arabic], Facebook, March 21, 2021, https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0hsppbMYevY6m35oQm9rQZ1w23kdmowSKvLLT8zAGM95z9qj53H1EqQcYpteSfZ2il&id=174130907545104&mibextid=qC1gEa.

59 Al-Hirak al-Fahmawi al-Mwowheda, “‘Report 3’: The Police Is the Root of the Problem” [in Arabic], Facebook, March 23, 2021, https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02C3Vuy4dJQSBSzNnRth8wihXNG9T7rUTAhzeFtuBCz6ynqocGSabDZHCKqAQ3vV1gl&id=174130907545104&mibextid=qC1gEa.

60 Al-Hirak al-Fahmawi al-Mwowheda, “‘Report 4’: The Police Is the Root of the Problem” [in Arabic], Facebook, March 27, 2021, https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02ENUy7ZUjsWcvSRuKX4qhuDJNEXZtKtjsELwWVpQaZ3BSNyr3FgQ5vrszZJYA84mql&id=174130907545104&mibextid=qC1gEa.

61 Lana Tatour, “The ‘Unity Intifada’ and ’48 Palestinians: Between the Liberal and the Decolonial,” JPS 50, no. 4 (2021): 84-89, https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2021.1978800.

62 Tatour and Tatour, “The Criminalization and Racialization of Palestinian Resistance,” 94.