Boy, 4, killed by a stray bullet near Nazareth, amid a crime wave in Israel’s Arab community

The child was hit by a stray bullet in a playground, in Bir al-Maksur. In 2021, 125 Israeli Arabs died from crime and gang violence, fuelled by easy access to weapons among young people. This issue is very political in Israel.

Nazareth (AsiaNews) – The death of a 4-year-old boy hit by a stray bullet in a town near Nazareth raises again the issue of violent crime within Israel’s Arab communities. Israeli police arrested four people in connection with the incident, but they all deny any wrongdoing.

The child, Ammar Hujayrat, died yesterday in front of his mother while he was in a playground in Bir al-Maksur. It is believed that the bullet that hit the boy came from a construction site 300 metres away. Ammar’s tragedy is not an isolated incident.

Violence associated with organised crime is a scourge that has long afflicted Israel’s Galilee region, as well s other cities with significant numbers of Israeli Arabs, i.e., the descendants of those Palestinian Arabs who did not abandon their homes in 1948 but remained within Israel’s internationally recognised borders.

In recent years, this violence has become increasingly lethal. According to the Abraham Initiatives, an association actively promoting the rights Israel’s of Arab Palestinian citizens[*], as many as 125 Israeli Arabs, including 16 women, were killed in crime-related incidents in 2021, a record in recent years.

What is more alarming is the age of dead: 62 (almost half) were under 30, 19 under 20. The killing of very young people is largely an urban problem: East Jerusalem, Umm El-Fahm, Ramla, Haifa, Nazareth, Lod, Jaffa.

This is linked to a flood of weapons in circulation; in fact, 83 per cent of the victims died from gunshots. This is a paradox in a country like Israel where security has always been a existential issue.

Precisely for this reason, the lack of action against criminal gangs has also been a major topic in Israeli politics for a while.

Pushed by their electorate, the Arab parties have called on the government to act, amid accusations that the authorities have left Palestinian communities, already penalised by a lack of investments and social services, to fend for themselves.

The Ra'am party (United Arab List), led by Mansour Abbas, has called for greater action. Since June 2021, the party has been a member of the government of Prime Minister Neftali Bennett, who took over from Benjamin Netanyahu.

So far though, results in the fight against crime have been very limited.

[*] Israeli Arabs now make up more than 20 per cent of the country’s population.

• israel
• galilee
• nazareth
• bir al-maksur
• ammar hujayrat
• stray bullet
• crime
• gangs
• arab parties
• government inaction