51-year-old man shot dead in northern village of Arara

A man was shot dead on Sunday in the village of Arara in northern Israel.

The 51-year-old man, a resident of the Arab village, was declared dead at the scene by medics.

Police said they opened an investigation into the man’s death and that they had launched a search of the area to find the perpetrators.

Earlier on Sunday, two men were shot and wounded while in a vehicle at the entrance to the northern town of Migdal Haemek.

The two men, aged 21 and 23 and both residents of Nazareth, were in serious and moderate condition.

Those shootings came a day after a 27-year-old was seriously injured in a shooting in Kafr Qara in northern Israel.

And on Friday, a 22-year-old man was moderately injured when he was shot in the village of Majd al-Krum.

According to the Abraham Initiatives nonprofit, the man fatally shot in Arara was the 34th Arab in Israel to be killed in a homicide since the start of the year.

Some 400,000 illegal weapons are circulating in Israel, according to a 2020 Knesset report, the vast majority of them in Arab communities, which have seen a surge in violence in recent years, driven mainly by organized crime.

In April, Channel 12 news reported that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wanted police to conduct a wide-scale operation and confiscate illegal weapons in the Arab community in the wake of a series of deadly terror attacks. He found, however, that police were incapable of launching such an operation, because they are already working at full capacity, the report said.

Arab communities have seen a surge in violence in recent years, driven mainly, but not only, by organized crime. Arab Israelis blame the police, who they say have failed to crack down on powerful criminal organizations and largely ignore the violence, which includes family feuds, mafia turf wars, and violence against women.

The community has also suffered from decades of neglect.