From the Liveblog of
Monday, January 19, 2026
Ra’am’s Abbas slams Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, for ignoring soaring crime in Arab community
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas slams Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset, blaming the premier and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for failing to tackle rising crime, especially in the Arab sector.
Addressing Netanyahu during a so-called 40-signature debate, which the opposition can compel the prime minister to attend once a month by collecting the requisite number of signatures from MKs, Abbas notes that Netanyahu has served as prime minister since 2009 and that “over the past 20 years nearly 2,000 citizens have been murdered as part of the phenomenon of crime and violence within Arab society.”
“In the past year alone, we surpassed 250 murder victims, including 46 murdered women in Israel,” Abbas says, complaining that “for many years, thousands of citizens in Israel have been paying protection money to criminal organizations, and there is still no response. There is widespread penetration into local government; some local authorities have fallen under the control of criminal organizations. There are also attempts to take over many businesses — effectively destroying not only citizens’ lives but also their livelihoods.”
Abbas says Israelis are experiencing “a loss of personal, community, municipal and national security,” stating that this is not limited to Arab society and asserting that it represents “a systemic failure — both at the policy level, in attention, priorities, and effort invested in this issue, and at the level of the day-to-day functioning of law enforcement and state authorities in general.”
Netanyahu has made many promises to deal with the issue but has not taken the appropriate steps, he insists, arguing that this is “first and foremost a policy problem.”
Abbas says he has requested that Likud MK Eli Dallal be appointed a deputy minister in the National Security Ministry in order to serve as a “project lead for eradicating crime and violence,” asserting that he cannot work with Ben Gvir, accusing him of impeding plans to handle crime in the Arab sector.
The Times of Israel Community.