Police arrest 7 relatives of Bedouin woman murdered in Negev town

Police have arrested seven relatives of a woman murdered in the Negev this week on suspicion of involvement in her death, Arab outlets report.

Aisha Abu-Wadi, a widow in her 30s from Kuseife, was getting out of a taxi to visit her children at school in the Bedouin town on Monday when she was shot dead by a masked man who fled the scene.

Abu-Wadi was murdered amid a long-running custody dispute between her and the family of her late husband, who was killed in a traffic accident a few years ago.

Her children  moved in with their paternal grandparents soon after her husband’s death, and the widow struggled to visit them.

עאישה נרצחה דקות לאחר השיחה עם בנה: "מתגעגעת אליך, תשמור על אחים שלך"https://t.co/W1Wee00qMH pic.twitter.com/zLnOZWId1e

— ynet עדכוני (@ynetalerts) February 11, 2025

Her death added to the spiraling homicide rate in the Arab community. In a 2024 report, the Israel Observatory on Femicide found that a disproportionate number of female murder victims are Arab, comprising half of the 20 women killed in Israel that year.

According to the anti-violence watchdog Abraham Initiatives, there have been 31 homicides in the Arab community since the beginning of 2025, compared to 17 during the same period last year.