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| Jonathan Elkins A demonstrator holds the photo of an Israeli-Arab citizen murdered amid a surge of gun violence plaguing Arab communities in Israel, in Tel Aviv, Jan. 31, 2026. Tens of thousands of Arab and Jewish citizens have joined forces to demand an end to government inaction. Loading…

Feb. 09, 2026, 5:34 p.m. ET | Lod, Israel; and Washington

When a police siren sounds in Lod, once a crossroads of the ancient world but now one of the most dangerous cities in Israel, dread follows.

Sereen Abu Laban, a lawyer from this mixed Arab-Jewish city, says she instantly fears there’s been another murder or injury committed by organized Arab crime gangs.

Standing at the window of her office, she points to a corner near a mosque where a man was recently shot on a street crowded with children and other bystanders.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog calls deadly crime in Arab-Israeli society a “national emergency.” But the police, under far-right Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, appear indifferent. Now Arab citizens are overcoming their fears to protest publicly. Jews are joining in.

“Everyone in Lod feels threatened,” she says. “We check the lock on the front door many times a night.”

Ms. Abu Laban says she’s grieving a close family friend who was killed in front of her home by criminals. “She tried to call me that day,” she says. “I was too busy to answer. Then her daughter called me with the news.”

So far this year, 39 Arab citizens of Israel have been murdered. That’s one person a day. Three family members were shot last week in the north, and another three in a highway shooting, prompting Israeli President Isaac Herzog to call crime in Arab society a “national emergency.”

The violence follows a record high 252 murders in Arab communities in 2025, according to the Abraham Initiatives, which tracks Arab victims of homicide.

Anger over the surge in homicides – and the feeling in the Arab sector that the government is being intentionally negligent in combating the crime wave – has intensified, and driven tens of thousands into the streets in recent demonstrations across Israel. It is also pushing Arab political leaders toward renewed cooperation.

On Tuesday, a two-hour work stoppage is planned as part of a nationwide “day of disruption” to protest “the abandonment of Arab society to violence and crime,” according to Standing Together, a joint Jewish-Arab movement helping to coordinate the day’s events.

Mahmoud Illean/AP Israeli police investigate a deadly crime scene in the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Lod in central Israel, where a gunman fired on a car, killing one person and wounding two others, Jan. 31, 2026. The backlash speaks not just to outrage but a potential turning point for Israel’s Arab minority, some 20% of the nation’s population. Experts say their long-standing grievances over personal security, inequality, and strained relations with the state have converged into an unusually broad civic mobilization.

The aim is to force the issue of Arab-sector crime onto the national agenda in a consequential election year and reshape Arab political participation to influence government priorities.

Arab citizens’ feelings of neglect, abandonment, and distrust have been exacerbated by the actions of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister of national security, under whose watch Arab-sector crime has soared.

Critics say instead of fighting crime, including the flow of illegal weapons, Mr. Ben-Gvir has been focused on policing political dissent among Palestinian citizens of Israel over the Gaza war and agitating against Arab citizens as threats to Israel’s security.

Many in the community believe the government prefers standing by and watching them kill one another rather than tackling the problem, says Badi Hasisi, a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem who is studying the Arab crime epidemic. He cites data showing indictment rates at below 20% for the Arab community, compared with about 60% to 70% for Jewish society.

The grassroots protests started after Ali Zbeidat, a supermarket chain owner in Sakhnin, an Arab city in northern Israel, said in January that he was targeted by gangs trying to extort him. Instead of giving in, he shuttered his stores and spoke out. Other shopkeepers followed, leading to a one-day citywide strike and a 100,000-person march, followed by protests throughout the Galilee. An Arab-Jewish solidarity protest then brought out some 70,000 in Tel Aviv Jan. 31. A convoy from northern Israel to Jerusalem tied up traffic Sunday.

Addressing the rally in Tel Aviv, Jamal Zahalka, the head of an umbrella organization representing Arab citizens, called upon the government to dismantle the crime gangs, solve murder cases, collect weapons, and improve education and employment.

“The government can, but does not want to. The police can, but refrain from acting,” he said. “When it comes to crime in Arab towns, the police adopt a policy of lethal restraint.”

Nagham Zbeedat, who covers Palestinian affairs for Haaretz, says there is “a shift in the Arab community” in which people who feared retribution from organized crime are feeling more emboldened.

Jonathan Elkins Tens of thousands of Israeli Jews and Arabs demonstrated together in Tel Aviv, Jan. 31, 2026, to protest against the rampant gun violence plaguing Arab-Israeli communities and government neglect of the problem. “They saw that a person so well-known and with so much to lose was willing to speak up, then everyone can speak out,” she says. “Together they want to shame those who are perpetrating the crimes.”

“It’s about the right to stay alive,” says Dr. Khader Sawaed, an expert on Arab society at the Israel Democracy Institute, who lives in the northern Arab city of Shefar’am. He has seen neighbors killed. “If your life is threatened 24/7, you have nothing to lose. So, people are in the streets now.”

Dr. Sawaed sees the protests as a catalyst for an electoral and political reawakening, to ensure that any new government set up after the elections will address crime and the community’s needs.

Politically, a shift is percolating. Israel’s four Arab parties signed an agreement to run as a single body, which could make them a major parliamentary force in national elections to be held later this year.

Over the past decade, Israel has seen rising violence and homicide rates, particularly within Arab communities, where crime increased 14 to 16 times more than for the Jewish majority, says Professor Hasisi. Greater access to firearms is one driver, he says, alongside the erosion of traditional family and community structures, limited opportunities for young Arab men, and the pressures of an increasingly Western lifestyle of consumerism.

While police have cracked down on violent crime among Jewish Israelis, they have largely abandoned policing efforts in Arab areas enabling criminal gangs to thrive, says Professor Hasisi.

In 2022, the short-lived and broad-based “change government,” which included an Arab party and ousted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous coalition, launched a program to combat crime in the Arab community, yielding positive results, he says.

After new elections in 2022 restored Mr. Netanyahu to power, he appointed Mr. Ben-Gvir, a Jewish ultranationalist convicted of anti-Arab incitement, to oversee the national police force. By the end of 2023, homicides in the sector had more than doubled.

Ammar Awad/Reuters A demonstrator holds a sign with an image of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has authority over the national police, that reads, "The Bedouin are against the murder. You failed.," outside the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, Jan. 11, 2026. The protesters were calling on the government to protect the Bedouin Arabs of the Negev desert from crime and killings within the community through effective law and order. The scene Jan. 31 in a central Tel Aviv square, of Arab and Jewish Israelis protesting side by side, was a rare sight in Israel. Reem Amara, from the Arab village of Kfar Kana, says she came because, “We are worried about the future of our children and grandchildren. We must work to change the government and ensure that the next one looks out for the Arab sector.”

Waving an Israeli flag, Yiftach Reicher Atir, a Jewish Israeli, says “the Arabs are Israelis that are suffering from horrific murders. I am here to identify with their pain and to push the government to do something.”

In their quest for security, a higher quality of life, and access to equitable education, welfare, and health services, “more and more Arab families are leaving their original communities,” and moving to Jewish areas, says Ola Najami-Yousef, director of the Jewish-Arab Center for Peace at Givat Haviva, an organization that works for civic equality. Some, she adds, are leaving the country.

According to a recent Israel Democracy Institute survey, a third of Arab citizens are considering leaving Israel to live either permanently or temporarily in another country, compared with a quarter of Jewish citizens. Another IDI survey indicated that those who want to leave tend to be more educated and affluent.

Talk of emigrating is especially noteworthy given Israel’s Palestinian citizens are deeply rooted to the land and their communities with members living within extended family frameworks.

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“Leaving one’s hometown, land, or close family environment was often socially discouraged and considered somewhat taboo,” says Ms. Najami-Yousef.

Yara Kadura, an optician living in Lod, says she sometimes thinks of leaving. “I don’t see a future for my children. But I don’t want to leave the country in which I was born, where my parents and family live, where I have my childhood memories. We should not have to emigrate to find safety.”

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