Explosion of feral dog population threatens big cities with rabies, nature expert warns

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority’s chief scientist warned this week that a surge in the feral dog population in the northern West Bank is bringing rabies into Israel, and that greater numbers will enter big cities unless coordinated action is taken now.

“In the past, we worried about rabid foxes, then jackals, but last year and this year, the main concern is over [rabid] feral dogs,” Prof. Dror Hawlena told The Times of Israel this week.

Rabid jackals and dogs have grabbed the headlines this month.

In one particularly horrific incident, jackals entered the tents of campers by the Sea of Galilee and bit a girl in the face. A rabid female jackal was subsequently caught and destroyed.

In another incident, a puppy adopted in the Jerusalem suburb of Pisgat Ze’ev, near the West Bank, was found to be rabid after it had been walked in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and traveled on public transport, endangering dozens of people and other dogs.

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While rabies is deadly for animals and humans, humans can be vaccinated immediately after a bite to prevent the disease from developing.

The only human to die of rabies in Israel in recent years was a 77-year-old shepherd from northern Israel, who was bitten by his own unvaccinated dog in 2024 and sought medical attention too late.

In the wake of war

Northern Israel has long been a rabies flashpoint, given its proximity to Lebanon and Jordan, where unvaccinated stray dogs are common. In northern Israel, the number of jackals and feral dogs has increased thanks to piles of waste left by IDF soldiers, as they have battled the Hezbollah terror organization for nearly three years.

Southern Israel, particularly near centers of Bedouin concentration, where sanitation is poor, has also seen rising cases of feral dogs, although not, so far, of rabies. Since the deadly Hamas invasion on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, more stray dogs have been able to enter Israel from the enclave.

But it is what’s happening in the West Bank that keeps Hawlena awake at night. “The main thing that frightens us is Samaria,” he said, using the Israeli term for the northern West Bank, “where there’s a crazy increase” in feral dogs.

“Our great fear was that it would move over the Green Line into Israel, and we are at the start of such an event,” he went on. “We’ve warned about this. There’s a fear it will come into the big urban centers of Israel.”

According to Agriculture Ministry figures, there have already been 75 cases of rabies this year, 43 of them involving dogs, and 20 jackals. That compares with a total of 102 cases last year, of which rabid dogs and jackals accounted for 36 cases each.

The distribution of rabid dogs is also widening.

They have been identified this year in many West Bank Jewish settlements, from Beit Horon and Shilo, to Itamar, Yitzhar, Beit Arieh, and Barkan. In December, over two dozen soldiers from the Samaria Regional Brigade were given preventative anti-rabies treatment after adopting puppies found to be carrying the disease.

Within central Israel this year, there have already been three cases of rabid dogs in Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut, close to the West Bank seamline, and one in nearby Modi’in Elit. There was also one each in the cities of Holon, Rosh HaAyin, Ra’anana, Kfar Saba and Jerusalem.

Multiple explanations

Fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which began with the latter’s rocket attacks on October 8, 2023, left many areas of northern Israel’s airspace and territory off limits to nature and parks authority staff, who drop oral vaccines for animals from the air and distribute them on the ground on behalf of the Agriculture Ministry, which carries overall responsibility for rabies prevention.

Hawlena said the authority’s approach was to reduce waste and distribute vaccines, and only to cull where absolutely necessary.

However, waste is only increasing. And the oral vaccines work on jackals and foxes, but not on dogs.

Furthermore, the Nature and Parks Authority is authorized by law to destroy feral dogs only within its national parks and nature reserves, and within a 500-meter (1,640-foot) radius of them, to protect wildlife. There have already been several cases of the dogs mauling endangered gazelles.

In the West Bank, where the authority is authorized to deal with rabid animals, sanitation has only worsened, according to Hawlena. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said recently that Israel’s withholding of PA tax revenues had left it particularly strapped for cash.

But the authority’s room for maneuver in the West Bank is also severely limited, although for safety and security reasons.

“We’ve been warning about the spread of rabies for at least a year,” said Hawlena, “trying to get the Agriculture, Environmental Protection, and Health ministries on board. If things get out of control, it concerns us that mass poisoning will be needed, which can harm other animals too.”

With the authority limited, the job of controlling wild animals and dogs falls to local authorities, which, according to the Federation of Local Authorities, are ill-equipped for the task.

A federation statement said the local authorities “take a grave view of the lack of government backing in the face of the spread of rabies to population centers.”

In urban areas, local government was “forced to bear the huge burden of handling stray dogs almost alone, given the meager support from the Agriculture Ministry,” the statement went on.

It added, “Rabies does not stop at an imaginary line of 500 meters from nature reserves. It is time that the state takes responsibility and leads a budgeted and joint national plan for the sake of the safety of the citizens of Israel.”

The Parks Authority is trying to advise local authorities, such as the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality, within whose jurisdiction jackals have expanded from Yarkon Park into city streets, encouraged by waste and by food put out by well-meaning residents to feed street cats.

In March, the authority launched a media campaign to raise awareness of the importance of good sanitation, but that had to be postponed due to the latest war with Iran.

In a long explanation on its website (in Hebrew), published on June 16,  the Agriculture Ministry, which takes overall responsibility for rabies prevention, said it was operating a “nationwide system for the prevention, monitoring and treatment of rabies throughout the year.”

It said some 650,000 oral vaccine baits are distributed annually from the air and on the ground, “with the aim of creating a ‘protective shield’ against the spread of the disease among jackals, foxes and other wild animals.” Recently, this was increased to 670,000 baits.

It went on, “The fight against rabies begins on the ground, and therefore the Agriculture Ministry works in close cooperation with local authorities …to identify risk areas as early as possible, reduce the stray dog ​​population, increase vaccination rates, and prevent the spread of the disease.”

Yael Arkin, CEO of Let the Animals Live, called for a “systemic approach that combines prevention, environmental management, and professional decision-making” to reduce risks to the public, maintain animal health, and “prevent the next crisis, instead of reacting to it with hindsight.”