Top Arab MK urges police chief to probe deadly shooting of Bedouin man by cops

By Ariela Karmel

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5 January 2026, 5:09 pm

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Ariela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.

Hadash-Ta'al party chairman Ayman Odeh attends a faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, January 5, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Hadash-Ta’al party leader Ayman Odeh says that he appealed to police chief Daniel Levy today to demand the immediate release of body-camera footage from police officers involved in the killing of 36-year-old Muhammad Hussein Tarabin on Saturday night.

The father of seven was shot and killed by a police officer in his home in Tarabin al-Sana, a Bedouin village in the Negev, during a controversial police crackdown on the town.

“I have just returned from the funeral of Mohammad Hussein Tarabin, whom a police officer killed the day before yesterday, as part of the so-called ‘governance’ approach of the fascist minister [Itamar] Ben Gvir,” says the leader of the Arab-majority party at the Knesset before a faction meeting, blaming the far-right national security minister, who oversees the police.

“Hadash-Ta’al submitted a request to the police commissioner to immediately expose the body-camera footage worn by the officer who killed Tarabin. We all want to know the truth, even though it is so clear,” he continues.

In the letter addressed to Levy, Odeh says he wrote that “substantial discrepancies between the police version [of events] and residents’ testimonies require full and immediate transparency,” especially as this was “a serious incident involving the lethal use of force, which ended in the loss of human life.”

According to the police report, Odeh says, Tarabin was killed during an attempted arrest after allegedly running toward police officers while holding a suspicious object.

However, the letter states that village residents reject this report, saying that Tarabin didn’t pose a threat and that the shooting took place immediately as the forces entered his house.

“We, the Arab population, have nobody to turn to in this country — not the minister, not the prime minister, and not the attorney general, who is a great democratic figure in regards to the judicial overhaul but does nothing when it comes to the Arab population,” Odeh says, adding that the only power the Arab community has is to turn out in force at the next election and “throw all of the racists out of government.”