Arab mayors tell MKs they’re under increased threat from criminal gangs: ‘People are afraid to leave their homes’

Arab mayors say they are coming under increased threat from criminal organizations at a Knesset committee meeting today, as the murder rate continues to soar in Arab society.

The meeting was requested by Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovich —- a former high-ranking police officer who was put in charge of fighting Arab crime under the Bennett-Lapid government -— after a bomb was found at the entrance to the city hall in Rahat, a southern Bedouin city.

He says he received a letter from Rahat mayor Talal Alkernawi documenting “34 separate instances of harassment toward him personally, toward his family members and toward the city of Rahat.” The lawmaker notes that the bomb was found just two days after he received the letter.

Alkernawi, also present at the meeting, tells the committee that the bomb is only the latest in a string of dozens of attempts on his life since taking office.

“I promised residents personal security, but I am not able to guarantee that promise,” he says, calling on police to up their crime-fighting efforts in Arab locales.

Hatem Shibli, who heads the Shibli-Umm al-Ghanam local council, says that he has security guards accompanying him around the clock for fear he will be harmed. He adds that mayors and local council heads are the “most vulnerable and threatened figures.”

Concurring with Shibli over Zoom, Arraba mayor Ahmad Nassar says that last winter, police raised the threat level against him from 4 to 6 after criminals shot at his house several times.

“If we can get to an officer in Iran, can we not get to a criminal who shot at a mayor or placed a bomb?” asks MK Hamad Amar, a Druze lawmaker for Yisrael Beytenu.

He laments the absence of senior police officers in the room and calls for a follow-up meeting in which Israel Police chief Danny Levy and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir are present.

“Arab society lives in fear. Personal security is zero, people are afraid to go out of their houses,” he says, insisting that the rising number of murder victims in Arab society is “no longer interesting, because the number changes every day.”

“Every murder that we don’t catch, that we don’t solve, invites the next murder,” he says, accusing police of inaction and failing to deter violent crime in Arab society.