3 shot dead within hours in Arab gangland violence amid bloody start to 2026

Gangland shootings claimed the lives of a teen and two others in the Arab Israeli community within hours on Monday, in what President Isaac Herzog lamented as a “national scourge.”

Just five days into the new year, the homicides brought the death toll from violent crime in Arab society to seven, continuing a wave of killings that saw 2025 end with a record 252 deaths.

The violence began in the early evening when a father and son were shot dead in Nazareth in what was reportedly an underworld hit that mistakenly targeted them.

The two victims were named in Hebrew media reports as Adham Nasser, 38, and his son Nadim, 15, residents of the northern Arab town of Tur’an.

The Israel Police said the shooting was related to the criminal underworld, ruling out terrorism. The force said it was probing the motive for the shooting.

Paramedics found the victims unconscious and without vital signs, both suffering from several bullet wounds.

The youth was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics, while his father was rushed to the Italian Hospital in the city, but succumbed to his wounds on the way.

According to reports, the pair were installing security cameras at a home in Nazareth, Israel’s largest Arab-majority city.

The home belonged to a known criminal figure, Channel 13 reported, without citing sources.

As they stepped outside, a volley of shots was fired at them.

The target was apparently the resident of the home rather than the Nassers, reports said.

Barely four hours later, a man was shot and killed in the Arab city of Kafr Qara, police and paramedics said.

The victim was named as 30-year-old barber Mahmoud Ghawi. Police said that the shooting was apparently also linked to organized crime.

Paramedics declared Ghawi’s death just as Herzog issued a rare statement on the violent crime wave in Arab society, saying it was not a “fated decree.”

He called the number of people killed in the Arab community in the first five days of the year a “chilling statistic that breaks the heart and proves the extent to which violence has truly become a national scourge.”

The homicide in Kafr Qara brought that toll up to seven.

The Abraham Initiatives anti-violence watchdog accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not doing enough to stem the killings.

“Crime in the Arab community is reaching negative records,” the group said in a statement. “Israeli citizens are being murdered on the streets. Under this government, the blood of citizens is cheap.”

In a round-up last week, the Initiatives said that of the 252 victims in 2025, the vast majority (88 percent) were killed in shootings, reflecting authorities’ struggle to combat a major rise in arms trafficking through Israel’s borders.

While often the victims were involved in criminal activity themselves, many of those killed and injured have been innocent bystanders.

Community leaders accuse the government of instituting policies that have allowed violent organized crime to proliferate in Arab towns and say police have largely failed to combat the problem, placing particular blame on the far-right politician responsible for law enforcement: National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Ben Gvir did not release a statement about the three homicides, though in a post to his X account, published after the slayings, he criticized an Arab lawmaker amid a spat over a recent deadly police raid in a southern Bedouin village.

Police have stridently denied neglecting the Arab community and rebuffed criticism of their handling of crime in Arab locales, acknowledging the scourge, but insisting that officers are doing all they can to combat the violence.

Police say intimidation of residents by criminals has hampered their efforts to combat violence in Arab areas. Indeed, underworld syndicates have become so insidious that many fear going to the police will make them a target of the criminal organizations that have come to dominate their neighborhoods.