Why are Arab murders going unsolved in Israel? Police blame everyone but themselves
The scene of a car explosion in Ramle, September 2024
Josh Breiner reports in Haaretz on 13 March 2025:
The phone call to Magen David Adom emergency services came shortly before 5 A.M. Two men were found shot to death in a car at the Al-Hanok Junction in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth. After being identified, they were confirmed to be Wasim Marwat and Abed Nuhad Abu Ahmad, both in their thirties and residents of Nazareth. Wasim was the third brother in the Marwat family to be murdered in the past two years. His brother Osama was shot to death in May 2023, also in the Nazareth. Six months later, his brother Mowanes was shot to death.
Police sources say that the three were linked to the Hariri crime family, which is in conflict with the crime ring headed by Samir Bakri. Police strongly suspect the murders were part of this ongoing war, but they have no hard evidence.
Bakri himself was arrested in August 2023, after a joint investigation by the police and the Shin Bet on suspicion of involvement in murder and extortion. In the end, he was charged for extortion and weapons offenses. But the witness summoned to the stand refused to cooperate, the prosecution compromised on a lenient plea bargain, and Bakri was sentenced to just 20 months in prison. He’s already been released, and though he was recently detained again for extortion, the situation on the ground remains explosive.
Even with the help from the Shin Bet, the police are struggling to reach those pulling the trigger, and criminals like Bakri remain free. The police are quick to blame Arab society, the prosecution and the courts – but rarely take a hard look at their own failures.
‘We Always Blame the Police’
The police are dealing with manpower shortage – especially in districts with the highest murder rates – along with an unwillingness among leadership to set clear goals and hold officers accountable when they fail to meet them.
Meanwhile, violence is rampant, and the expanding circle of crime continues to claim innocent lives. That was the case with Jawad Yassin, a 17-year-old from the northern city of Tamra, whose murder marked a new low for many. Yassin, a valedictorian 12th-grade student, was murdered last month – another innocent victim of the raging violence.
In an effort to find a solution, clerics, elected officials, and other community leaders convened at Tamra’s city hall. The atmosphere in the small room was tense, and above all, Ibrahim Hasarmeh’s words echoed through the room. Hasarmeh, head of the local council of Bi’ina, a small town near Carmiel, said: “This murder was perpetrated by our own people, within Islam. We always blame the government or the police. Yes, the police look down on us, but the root of the problem is within us. It’s a cancer eating away at us. The problem is tied to religion.”
Here Hasarmeh stopped and turned to Ra’ad Salah, the former head of the northern branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement, who is now described as the “head of the peace and reconciliation committees” in Arab society. “Don’t be angry at me, sheikh,” he said. “We have a problem in our religion – vendettas.”
These words sparked outrage, but Hasarmeh stood his ground and continued: “We don’t educate our children, and we always blame the police. But nobody in the police force tells us to murder a 13-year-old child. Then they’ll come to kill his father, and he’ll go to stab the best young man in the rival family. It’s unacceptable that we keep gathering to talk about violence while the disease is festering inside us.”
A murder scene in Kafr Qasem, October 2024
In response, Salah said that despite all the murders, the police aren’t arresting suspects. “Do you know why nobody is being arrested?” asked Hasarmeh, answering his own question: “Because we know the murderer, we know the criminal, and we know who’s the hoodlum and who deserves respect. But at the moment of truth, nobody dares to tell the truth – and everyone hides.”
When Despair Wins
Hasarmeh’s words were met with shock, anger, and scorn in Arab society. On the Jewish right, however, they were received with sympathy – to the point that Michael Ben Ari, a far-right activist and former MK now on trial for incitement against Arabs – announced that he would invite Hasarmeh to testify on his behalf. The right-wing NGO Regavim quickly spread Hasarmeh’s remarks on social media.
The tweet from Regavim was shared many times in closed police WhatsApp groups, treated as confirmation of the police’s long-standing claims: that witnesses to murder in Arab society routinely refuse to cooperate, evidence is intentionally destroyed, crimes scenes are cleaned up, and surveillance footage is erased. The police claim that such actions are widespread and contribute to the low clearance rate for murder cases.
This week it happened again, in the villages of Kafr Qara and Zemer. Two men in their thirties were shot dead, but when police arrived at the scene, they discovered that the surveillance cameras had been removed. “Those who remove them are usually involved in the murder itself or are witnesses scared that the criminals will target them next,” says a police investigator.
“I can understand the witnesses, but I can’t accept it. If people in the Arab community understood how much we invest in solving each murder, they would cooperate with us. But when you arrive at a scene that’s been rinsed with chlorine or where the cameras have been erased or removed, you’re starting the investigation not from zero – but from below zero.”
Hasarmeh stands by his words, even more than two weeks after the charged meeting in Tamra. “I told the truth,”, he says in an interview with Haaretz. “First of all, we need to fix the culture that comes from the home and from school.” Hasarmeh subtly criticizes Salah, noting that his reconciliation committees – which in recent served as a framework for “sulha” (traditional dispute resolution) between rival parties in Arab society – were recently shut down by order of the police and the Shin Bet, who claimed they were linked to the northern branch of the outlawed Islamic Movement.
In Bi’ina, the small town headed by Hasarmeh, the number of murders has remained relatively low over the years. This stands in sharp contrast to most Arab cities in Israel, where murder rates are at all-time highs. Since the beginning of the year, 48 people in Israel’s Arab community have been killed – compared to 36 in the same period last year and in 2023, which at the time was considered a record.
Meanwhile, the percentage of solved cases by the police remains abysmal: In 2024, only 15% of the murders in Arab society have been solved — 36 out of a total of 240. The rate was similar in 2023.
“There’s almost no murder in Arab society where I don’t discover that the crime scene was tampered with,” says a senior police officer. “That includes erasing surveillance footage or a lack of cooperation with the police. Some witnesses are scared that if they speak up, they’ll be the next. Others simply don’t trust the police and don’t want to cooperate – out of despair.”
But the police also seem unwilling – or unable – to examine themselves. First, there’s no one in the organization currently in charge of addressing crime in the Israeli Arab community. Deputy Commissioner Yoav Telem, who is now filling the role, is about to leave the force despite efforts from senior officials to persuade him to stay. And in any case, the fact that the position is held by a deputy commissioner (as opposed to his predecessor, who was a commissioner) reflects Commissioner Danny Levy’s attitude toward crime in Arab society.
At the same time, a police source admits that the sheer volume of murders makes it very difficult for the organization to cope. “In the end, the blanket is too short,” he says. “The Northern District, for example, is handling so many cases that it can’t even remember which murder it dealt with two weeks ago. On the other hand, a central unit in Lachish, for example, where there is no Arab population and murders happen only once every few weeks, is getting results.”
According to Haaretz figures, 70% of the murders in Arab communities have taken place in two districts: the Coastal District and the Northern District. The trend of recent years – which peaked under former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – is continuing this year. Meanwhile, the clearance rate has remained stable at between 15% and 20% over the past several years. Ironically, these are the very districts suffering from a both shortage of officers and a lack of police stations, especially in Arab communities.
The senior official points to another longstanding problem: the absence of clear goals. “The commissioner needs to sit down with the district commanders in the Northern District and the Coastal District and tell them: ‘Take officers, take resources. Bring results within six months to a year. If you didn’t meet the goals, you’re out.’ But for Levy, this concept of ‘goals’ doesn’t exist – because he knows that when he was the commander of the Coastal District, the number of murders nearly doubled.”
The police also point fingers at the State Prosecutor’s Office. “They’ll only take a case to trial if they’re 100% sure of a conviction,” says a senior police official. “That’s almost never the case when you have no cameras and when people are afraid to talk.” Another officer adds: “We often know exactly who the murderer is because we have intelligence. But we have no proof. And without that, the prosecution won’t even listen to us – so we have to let them go.”
Police also claim that the courts are too soft on offenders. ” People with guns involved in shootings, or people who have committed murder get very light sentences. There’s no deterrence, and they’re back on the streets,” says a senior police official. He also points to plea bargains in murder cases and warns: “Only very long prison sentences will make people think twice. That’s the only thing that deters — prison.”
The police refused to respond to Haaretz’s questions and declined to provide a spokesperson to comment on the low clearance rate in murder cases.
This article is reproduced in its entirety