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Speaking on camera following reports of increasing youth violence, including the killing of 21-year-old former Israeli soldier Yemanu Binyamin Zalka last week, Israeli Defense Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was clear.
“This will be an all-out war,” he said, announcing a national effort to combat youth violence. “We will restore safety to the streets and restore peace to the parents. Anyone who harms Israeli civilians will face the strong hand of the Israeli police and pay a heavy price.”
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The answer was sharp, agreed with the victim, and promised a solution.
This, critics say, is in stark contrast to Ben-Gvir’s response – or lack thereof – to the ongoing epidemic of violence in Israeli towns and villages inhabited by Palestinians, which has killed nearly 100 people and, according to Israel’s Ministry of Finance, costs the country up to $6.7bn a year.
Allegations of a two-party police force, undermining what Israel calls the “Arab sector”, have plagued the Israeli police for years. But the situation has worsened under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been in power ever since at the end of 2022and Ben-Gvir, an aloof politician who oversees the police.
Statistics since Ben-Gvir took office confirm the story that violence in the Palestinian territories has worsened. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the murder rate in the Palestinian territories in Israel has increased from 4.9 per 100,000 in 2020, to 11 per 100,000, similar to the rate of murder in Sudan and Iraq.
In contrast, the homicide rate in Israel’s Jewish community was about 0.6 per 100,000.
This increase cannot be attributed to the current government – Netanyahu himself was prime minister in 2020, when the murder rate dropped. But critics say the installation of figures in the government like Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who are said to be anti-Palestinian, has contributed to the escalation of violence.
Researchers and experts who spoke to Al Jazeera had little doubt about the Netanyahu government’s culpability in the increase in killings.
“They are not worried about Palestinians killing each other, as they have been allowed to do for years,” said Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian member of the Hadash party and a long-time critic of the lack of police in Palestinian areas of Israel.
“It is not possible for the police to provide services to Arab communities,” he said, referring to the lack of police in the Palestinian territories. “It’s forced on you. It’s hateful.”
Although police stations are common in many Jewish communities in Israel, there are about 10 in most Palestinian communities.
Among the decisions that have angered Palestinian rights groups in Israel is the government’s decision in December to cut $68.5m from the economic development program for Palestinians in Israel, in order to support more police in the areas.
The opposition agreed that more money is needed to support the police, but they complained that the money comes from a fund intended to eliminate the causes of crime by dealing with housing and economic development, areas where Palestinian communities are known to be the least compared to Jews.
Extreme poverty
Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about 21 percent of the country’s population. Economically disadvantagedthey are descendants of Palestinians who did not flee after the establishment of Israel in 1948 – an event known as the Nakba, when approximately 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and deported.
Often living in towns and villages separate from Israeli Jews, Palestinians often report economic instability, with little or no government presence.
Unemployment has been a part of their daily lives, researchers say, but the unemployment rate has increased significantly since Israel lost access to the West Bank, where many worked, following the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in 2023.
The most recent date, based on 2024 statistics, shows that 37.6 percent of Palestinian households in Israel live below the poverty line.
Local networks in Israel’s Palestinian towns and villages have grown in popularity and attracted attention in recent years, sometimes taking the form of brutal organizations that have not been disrupted, critics say, by the current government.
“There is a large terrorist group that controls all the Arab areas,” said Daniel Bar-Tal, a professor of political psychology at Tel Aviv University, adding that crime and murder are allowed to continue with the government’s involvement.
Among other things, the government just likes it, they just say, ‘Look, this is Arab culture, this is Arabic. They also rely on the cooperation of terrorists to get information about what is happening in these areas,” he said, referring to the many stories of how their colleagues who declared terrorism in their areas were removed. “And finally, it is because the police are controlled by Ben-Gvir, a racist who likes to humiliate Arab people.”
Ben-Gvir has previously denied charges of racism and says he is only fighting those who harm Jews.
The police are the enemy
From his role in the government to encourage the killing of people in Gaza, to defending police officers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner, Ben-Gvir’s actions have offended many of Israel’s self-proclaimed liberals, as well as shocked observers around the world.
However, following the rise in crime in Israel, criticism of Ben-Gvir’s role as national security minister has begun to hit home.
As well as the obvious views in the liberal press in Israel, accusing the Minister of National Security of being “preoccupied with TikTok” when Zelka was killed, or looking at his efforts to arrest teachers wearing Palestinian flags on their gates while the death threats are breaking records, there have also been criticisms from those close to the establishment.
Earlier this month, Israel’s Supreme Court intervened between Ben-Gvir and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, ordering the pair to appear at Baharav-Miara’s residence after he asked to be removed from his position following alleged political interference in the police force.
“Nobody cares if Ben-Gvir is doing well in his job,” political scientist Ori Goldberg said. “They are there to punish the Palestinians, even those in Israel. They are punished for lack of security, as they are punished by brutal planning, and the lack of medical care punishes them. This is how apartheid Israel always works.”
