How Israel's policies have fuelled organised crime in Palestinian communities

Israeli leaders declared a "national emergency" this week over a wave of violent crime in Palestinian towns inside Israel, after a series of mass shootings raised the death toll among Palestinian citizens of Israel to 37 since the start of the year.

2025 was the deadliest year for crime in Israel's Palestinian community on record, with at least 249 Palestinians killed.

They accounted for more than 80 percent of all homicides in Israel despite Palestinians making up roughly one fifth of the population.

While Israeli officials and police have largely attributed the killings to internal gang feuds, reporting by Israeli media, civil society organisations, and Palestinian political leaders has pointed to a crisis rooted in long-standing state policies.

These include economic exclusion, uneven law enforcement, and political marginalisation, which have allowed organised crime groups to entrench themselves and assume control over daily life in Palestinian communities.

Herzog declares 'national emergency'

Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Thursday described the killings in Palestinian communities as a "national emergency" following multiple shootings in the north and centre of the country, including the killing of three members of the Suweid family in the Bedouin village of Suweid Hamira, as well as three men shot dead days earlier near al-Tira and in Ibillin.

Israeli police said the incidents were linked to organised crime disputes, with at least 37 people killed since the start of the year.

The killings triggered mass protests last month in Palestinian towns and joint Arab-Jewish demonstrations in Tel Aviv, with protesters accusing the authorities of failing to protect Palestinian citizens and allowing violence to spiral unchecked.

Government responsibility and shifting accountability

As the violence has escalated, Benjamin Netanyahu has moved to transfer responsibility for the government task force on crime in Arab society from the Prime Minister’s Office to extreme-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Haaretz reported on Thursday.

A source familiar with the decision said Netanyahu had sought to avoid being directly associated with the rising number of murders, even as many warned that removing the task force from the prime minister's direct oversight effectively downgraded the issue.

The task force was established in 2024 to coordinate enforcement and prevention across government ministries. However, record homicide figures were reached since Ben-Gvir became Public Security Minister in late 2022, with killings in Palestinian communities doubling between 2022 and 2023.

Between 230 and 250 Palestinians have been killed every year from 2023 to 2025.

Criticism of Ben-Gvir has intensified, with Arab municipal leaders and Israeli media accusing him of actively enabling organised crime in Palestinian communities, including by dismantling in 2023 a special police unit established to combat crimes in Palestinian towns.

No repercussions for violent crime

Representatives of Palestinian local councils have said gang leaders feel there were "no repercussions" for violent crime, arguing that police enforcement had shifted into "a lower gear" under the extreme-right minister's watch.

Israeli Channel 12 reported in 2023 that Ben-Gvir's "carelessness" and the absence of effective police control had contributed to the sharp rise in killings, arguing that there was no senior minister actively capable of stopping the violence.

Knesset member Aida Touma-Sliman said the lack of decisive action reflected political priorities rather than operational constraints.

"As much as those sitting in the ministries think they can keep crime only in Arab towns and villages, it doesn’t work like that," she said in a recent Haaretz podcast interview on Friday. "There is no way to guarantee security for one group in the country when another group is suffering from neglect and the absence of state control."

She added that if Jewish communities were facing a comparable wave of killings, "the response would be immediate and forceful".

Touma-Sliman also noted that roughly 90 percent of murder cases in Palestinian communities remain unsolved, a level of impunity she said emboldens criminal groups and deepens public mistrust in law enforcement.

Crime as a mechanism of state control

Palestinian leaders and analysts argue that the spread of organised crime in Palestinian towns cannot be understood as a failure of governance alone, but as a consequence of how governance is exercised.

Rather than dismantling criminal networks, Israeli authorities have allowed them to operate in an environment marked by weak enforcement, near-total impunity, and political abandonment, effectively outsourcing control over Palestinian communities to violent actors.

In this context, organised crime groups have assumed the role of de facto enforcers, fragmenting society, intimidating residents, and weakening collective political and social life in places where the state has withdrawn meaningful protection.

"When the state abandons entire communities and allows armed gangs to rule daily life, that is not an absence of policy," Touma-Sliman said. "It is a policy with consequences."

Weapons, policing, and impunity

Israeli assessments estimate that more than 400,000 illegal firearms are circulating in the country, with a disproportionate number concentrated in Palestinian areas.

Touma-Sliman said criminal groups in Palestinian towns are now equipped with military-grade weapons, including automatic rifles, which she said would prompt a far stronger response if they were being used so openly in Jewish areas.

The crime wave has also extended to occupied East Jerusalem, where two Palestinian men aged 30 and 40 were shot dead in the Shuafat refugee camp, on Thursday evening.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem after occupying it in 1967, a move not recognised under international law.

Economic exclusion and criminal economies

Reporting by The New Arab has shown that economic discrimination plays a central role in sustaining organised crime in Palestinian communities, particularly through systematic exclusion from Israel’s formal banking system.

Studies cited in the reporting show that only around two percent of mortgages approved in Israel go to Palestinian citizens, despite them comprising more than 21 percent of the population.

Bank branches are overwhelmingly concentrated in Jewish areas, while Palestinian towns often lack basic financial services, forcing residents to seek credit through informal and unregulated channels.

As a result, many Palestinians rely on black market loans controlled by crime families, which charge monthly interest rates that can reach 10 to 20 percent.

Borrowers who fall behind on repayments are frequently subjected to threats, extortion, and armed attacks, with violence often directed not only at individuals but at their families and property.

Cases documented by The New Arab show how relatively modest loans can spiral into debts worth millions of shekels, trapping families in long-term cycles of repayment under threat of violence.

In several instances, families have been forced to sell homes or businesses, flee their towns, or take out additional loans to avoid lethal reprisals.

Economists and researchers say the absence of accessible, regulated credit has effectively allowed criminal organisations to step in as alternative financial providers, embedding them deeply in local economies and further entrenching their power in communities where the state has failed to ensure equal access to basic financial services.

By allowing armed gangs to dominate daily life while withholding effective protection, the Netanyahu government has enabled a system in which violence functions as a tool in the systematic erosion of Palestinian society inside Israel.