Police have solved just 12% of homicides in Arab communities this year, watchdog finds

Police have solved just 12 percent of homicides in Arab communities this year, according to the Abraham Initiatives watchdog, as violent crime continues to surge in cities and towns across Israel.

In a report released Tuesday night, the organization said that the Arab community has seen 144 homicide deaths in the first half of the year. The victims include 140 Arab citizens and four Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, who are subject to the authority of the Israel Police despite lacking citizenship.

Since then, the number of Arab sector homicide deaths has risen to 147, following a lethal car bombing on Tuesday and a pair of unrelated shootings that left two young men dead Wednesday morning in northern Israel.

One of the men, a 24-year-old bus driver named Ali Suwaed, was reportedly killed in Shfaram in a bitter dispute between two families based in the northern city.

The other victim was identified as 21-year-old Kamel Abu Kalib. Police believe he was assassinated in an act of revenge following a Tuesday car bombing that killed a high-profile mobster linked to the Hariri crime family, Hebrew outlets reported.

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According to the group’s most recent data — which factors in the two young men killed Wednesday — this year’s toll of homicide victims is 15% higher than that of 2025 during the same period.

“After the sharp rise in the number of victims in 2025, crime continues to run rampant in 2026 as well, and the number of victims in this current half-year period is larger than the number of victims in the first half of 2025,” the group said.

The bulk of these killings, nearly 40%, have occurred in the country’s north. Lod has seen the most murders so far this year, with nine individuals killed in the mixed Jewish-Arab city. Nazareth, Umm al-Fahm, Ramle and Rahat have each seen eight people killed since the start of 2026.

Last year was the deadliest on record for Arab society in Israel, as the community mourned 252 people slain in violent criminal circumstances. The vast majority of Arab sector homicides went unsolved in 2025 as well, with police managing to crack just 10% of cases, the monitor said.

The homicide rate in Arab society doubled in 2023 and continued to rise in the years following, save for a short dip in 2024, before reaching a new peak in 2025.

The massive uptick, which coincided with the start of Itamar Ben Gvir’s term as national security minister, has alarmed Arab community leaders, many of whom attribute the sharp rise to ineffectiveness — if not outright negligence — of law enforcement.

Police, for their part, have claimed that they are doing all they can to combat violent crime. Senior officers, including police chief Danny Levy, have placed blame on state prosecutors and the court system, and in other instances said that officers lack the technological means to efficiently collect evidence.

Earlier this week, following a spate of violence linked to a drug dispute in Jaffa, Tel Aviv District police chief Haim Sargaroff echoed a sentiment voiced several times by police brass, that crime in Arab society has morphed into a “national emergency.”

“We are in a state of national emergency; we need to work together here,” he said in an interview with Kan radio, referring broadly to other government agencies. “I’m not saying that the responsibility isn’t that of the police, but if we don’t work together, we won’t be able to win.”

Sargaroff noted that a great many of those targeted in criminal conflicts have little to no relation to underworld dealings, without going into detail on any particular victim.

“The people involved in the conflict are more wary, take more precautions, are more sensitive, so [the assassins] go to people further away, who are from the same family, the broader circle,” he said.