MK Odeh demands probe into deadly police shooting of Bedouin man, as funeral held

Hadash-Ta’al party leader Ayman Odeh demanded Monday that police probe the fatal shooting of a Bedouin man by officers and immediately release body camera footage from the incident, which took place over the weekend.

Speaking before a faction meeting in the Knesset, Odeh said he had just returned to Jerusalem after attending the slain man’s funeral, which drew thousands of mourners at around noon to the desert village of Tarabin al-Sana.

“I have just returned from the funeral of Muhammad 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,” said the leader of the left-wing Arab-majority party.

Tarabin, a 36-year-old father of seven, was shot and killed by a police officer on his doorstep at around midnight Saturday in Tarabin al-Sana, during a police raid on the town.

Odeh said that his party sent a letter to police chief Danny Levy demanding he “immediately release 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 continued.

In the letter, Odeh claimed 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.”

Police say that Tarabin endangered forces during an overnight operation to nab suspects in an arson attack on cars in nearby Jewish towns and planned to lunge at them with a close-quarters weapon. However, his family claimed that he posed no threat.

According to an i24 News report, the suspected officer also alleged during his interrogation that Tarabin had been alone in his house at the time of the shooting, but relatives claimed that was not the case.

The suspected officer’s name was barred from publication Monday morning, following a request by the police that was accepted by the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court.

Tarabin’s young son Hussein said that his father hadn’t said a word to police before one of them shot him in the chest. Officers then set his body down near the front door and continued searching the residence before whisking his body away in a police car, he claimed.

Hussein, the rest of his family and around 1,000 other mourners from Tarabin al-Sana and surrounding Bedouin towns took part in the slain man’s funeral procession at noon Monday.

After praying in a mosque near the village’s entrance, black-clad mourners chanted “God is great,” and the shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith, as they hastened down a dirt road to the cemetery.

Once reaching the cemetery, atop a hill just outside the town, pallbearers lowered the coffin, draped in a red and gold cloth, into the earth.

The funeral procession for Muhammad Hussein Tarabin, a Bedouin resident of Tarabin al-Sana killed by police fire in his home Saturday night pic.twitter.com/LSz8FGvOZH

— charlie summers (@cbsu03) January 5, 2026

Habis al-Atouneh, the mayor of Hura, a nearby Bedouin town, told attendees in Arabic that it was a “dark day for the Negev, and a dark day in the history of the Israel Police.”

He decried far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees the police, and blamed him for the shooting, but called on mourners to obey the law.

After most attendees had gone back down the hill, Tarabin’s sons and other male family members remained to mourn over his freshly dug grave.

The raid in Tarabin al-Sana, set into motion last Monday, is part of a larger police operation. It is being led by the Border Police’s National Guard force, which came into being during Ben Gvir’s tenure.

Bedouin leaders called a protest for Sunday against the larger police crackdown in southern Israel, dubbed Operation New Order, which has been going on since mid-November.

The far-right minister has toured the town numerous times over the past week, incensing residents, who accuse him of spearheading a campaign of incitement and delegitimization against Bedouin citizens of Israel.

As part of the raid, National Guard forces cordoned off Tarabin al-Sana with cinderblocks and began requiring those who exit and enter the village to show identity cards to security forces in routine checks.

Similar ad hoc checkpoints have been erected in Lakiya, Hura and most recently Segev Shalom, three other Bedouin towns in the area.