After eight murders in Arab community at weekend, Ben Gvir demands police crackdown
Minister in charge of police said to scold senior officers, urge they make use of new law allowing use of administrative orders against criminal suspects
After eight people were murdered in the Arab community over the weekend, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir urged police to issue administrative orders against criminal suspects, making use of a controversial law that critics claim sidesteps due process rights.
“I fought to legislate that law… and you [police] aren’t doing anything. The situation is intolerable,” he scolded a group of senior officers on Monday, according to Channel 13 news.
Ben Gvir was referring to a law passed in December allowing police to impose broad restrictions on suspects’ freedom of movement and expression on the basis of secret evidence.
Rights groups claim that the law infringes on due process rights and creates a separate method of enforcement for Israel’s Arab citizens.
Ben Gvir’s meeting with law enforcement brass was convened by Israel Police Commissioner Daniel Levy, who also reprimanded the officers: “You were appointed to ensure public safety. Where were all of the forces that were supposed to be on the ground?”
Levy complained that Border Police officers were not present in central Israel over the weekend.
The commissioner reportedly had requested that officers in the controversial National Guard force be stationed in the central city of Ramle — the site of a triple homicide on Friday night that heralded a slew of weekend homicides — but they were instead sent to southern Israel.
Ben Gvir and Levy were responding to a violent crime wave that rocked the Arab community in Israel this past weekend, claiming eight lives as the murder rate continues to spiral out of control in Arab locales.
The vast majority of homicides in the Arab community remain unsolved by law enforcement, with many community leaders criticizing police for focusing on what they say are the wrong things and failing to coordinate with local Arab politicians in the fight against violent crime.
No arrests have yet been reported in any of the six incidents that took place over the weekend.
On Friday morning, 61-year-old Khaled Sawaed was fatally shot in his car while setting out for work in the northern city of Shfaram. According to local Arab media, the victim’s 27-year-old son, Raslan, had been killed in a similar incident two years ago.
Later that night, three men in their 30s — Bilal Abu Ghanem, Salah Afifi and Bahaa Oumayra — were shot dead in Ramle, in a probable revenge killing for a double homicide that killed brothers Matin and Jamal al-Shmali less than 24 hours earlier.
???? הנרצחים אמש בחברה הערבית:
ענן נאסר נרצח בפיצוץ רכב בעראבה אל-בטוף. בנוסף 3 נרצחים ברמלה: סאלח אל-עפיפי, בהאא עמירה ובילאל אבו ג'אנם.
ברמלה היעד לרצח היה בעל עסק נרגילות, השנים האחרים היו לקוחות שניסו להגוף את הרוצחים ונורו ונרצחו בעצמם.
וכך עלה מספר הנרצחים בחברה הערבית מתחילת… pic.twitter.com/z8N7o66OdA— Asslan Khalil (@KhalilAsslan) April 12, 2025
Overnight between Friday and Saturday, 50-year-old Anan Nassar was killed in a car bombing that rocked Arraba, a formerly quiet northern Arab city that has seen a massive rise in gang-related crime over the past year.
Early on Sunday morning, two men were shot dead in separate incidents.
Mohammed Abd Tarabieh, 28, was killed in the northern town of Sakhnin and declared dead at Nahariya’s Galilee Medical Center.
The second victim, 31-year-old married father of two Elias Mutran, was gunned down in Nazareth shortly before 7 a.m. and declared dead at the city’s English Hospital.
Mutran had no criminal record, police said, and Kan cited acquaintances of the deceased as saying he was killed purely by chance while stopping at a bakery on his way to work.
Hours later in Tira, 51-year-old Marwan Amrur, a father of four, was critically wounded in a shooting while in his car and later pronounced dead at the hospital. He was driving with his wife, who was lightly injured by the gunfire.
There have been at least 76 homicides in the Arab community since the start of 2025 — a similar pace to 2024 and 2023, according to the Abraham Accords.
The coexistence group has recorded the unprecedented rise in violent crime in the Arab community in the first two years in office of Ben Gvir, whose portfolio includes the police.
Ben Gvir’s first year in office, 2023, saw murder rates in the Arab community soar to their highest ever — roughly double the previous year. The minister had gutted a program put in place by his predecessor Omer Barlev and Arab municipal leaders to combat crime in the Arab community.
In a belated report earlier this year, Ben Gvir’s office confirmed that homicides in the Arab communities had more than doubled in 2023. His office has yet to release data for 2024.
