Violence Among Israeli Arabs Threatens All of Israel

Fares Abu Fani was shot to death last week in Kafr Qara in northern Israel. The 29-year-old was the 187th Israeli Arab to die from violent crime this year.

A day earlier, a 30-year-old man was murdered in Abu Snan, an hour north of there. And a week earlier, three Bedouin brothers were murdered in southern Israel in an arms deal gone awry.

There are approximately 400,000 illegal guns circulating in Israel, a country of fewer than 10 million people; most of the weapons are in Arab areas. And most of the guns, ranging from handguns to machine guns, are stolen from the Israeli military. It’s a situation that lends itself to vicious crime, but more importantly, it puts the security of the entire nation at risk.

Unlike the United States, where gun ownership is a constitutional right and civilian firearms are widespread, Israel has strict gun control laws. Private ownership requires a license, is regulated, and is limited to specific circumstances, such as security work or living in high-risk areas.

Following the October 7 Hamas-led massacre, demand for firearms licenses skyrocketed; Israelis requested more than 400,000 firearms licenses from the Ministry of National Security.

Though gun violence has largely been contained within the Arab community in recent years, memories of the 2021 outbreak of violence between Arabs and Jews across Israel are not far from the minds of security officials.

A recent report prepared by the Shin Bet’s research department concluded that the availability and quantity of illegal weapons in Israel’s Arab society, coupled with a potential outbreak of inter-communal violence, constituted a significant security threat to the state. The agency warned Israeli government officials about the developments and made recommendations to counter the growing threat.

Following the disturbances of 2021, an Israeli police official warned that Iranian proxy Hezbollah was smuggling weapons into Israel to sow strife among its Arab citizens. This tracks with Iran’s policy of fighting Israel by trying to radicalize Israeli Arabs and Palestinians against it. The official noted that Hezbollah intended for the weapons to be delivered to “crime organizations in the Arab community.”

Even more concerning, there was a “several-fold” increase in weapons smuggling from Lebanon and Jordan, including a “marked improvement in the quality of weapons being sent.”

Aside from clear and pressing national security issues, gun crime is also taking a toll across Israel, especially in Arab communities. Though they comprise only 21 percent of Israel’s population, Arab citizens accounted for 74 percent of murder victims in 2023 and 2024. Over the last 10 years, the Jewish rate has been far lower.

According to the Abraham Initiatives, a nongovernmental organization that tracks issues related to Israel’s Arab sector, murders of Arab citizens of Israel increased between 2015 and 2023. But in 2023, that number exploded to 244, nearly doubling the previous high recorded in 2021. In the first half of 2025 alone, 128 Arab citizens of Israel were murdered. Just in September, at least 16 Arab Israelis were killed, and a police officer was gunned down while chasing suspects in an Arab town.

Experts say high crime rates among Israeli Arabs have been caused by low trust in the police among the Arab population; the dismantlement of Jewish organized crime in Israel, creating a vacuum filled by Arab syndicates; the prevalence of loansharking among Arab citizens, due to both internal and external pressures; the breakdown of the family structure in Arab society; and Arab communities being under-served by the Israeli government. This is something that previous Israeli governments have worked hard to address.

Unlike in 2021, the nightmare scenario of Arab citizens attacking their Jewish neighbors never materialized following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, atrocities in southern Israel. This might be an isolated incident — or a more hopeful sign of coexistence in Israel. But the threat still persists — as does the unacceptable number of Arabs who have been victims of gun crimes.

Israel must tackle the crime and violence suffocating Israel’s Arab communities, not just for the sake of its Arab citizens but also for the country’s overall security. This must be done in concert with internal Israeli Arab efforts to build community and prevent Arab youth from being drawn into the crime world. The combination of pervasive violent crimes, widespread illegal weapons, and anger toward Israel among some Arabs could turn deadly. With Israel fighting enemies on so many fronts, it cannot afford to face another from within.

David May is a senior research analyst and research manager at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Joe Truzman is an analyst and contributor at FDD’s Long War Journal (LWJ). For more analysis from David, Joe, and LWJ, please subscribe HERE. Follow Joe and David on X @DavidSamuelMay and @Jtruzman. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @LongWarJournal. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.