Nazareth teen fatally shot in latest murder in Israel’s Arab community

A young man was shot to death early Saturday in the northern city of Nazareth, the sixth Arab Israeli suspected of being murdered in the past week.

Khaled Nakhash, 19, was brought in critical condition to EMMS Nazareth Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police launched an investigation into the shooting. It was not clear if there was a suspected motive.

According to Channel 12 news, Nakhash was outside his home when he was fatally shot.

The deadly shooting was one of several over the past week in which Arab citizens were killed. A mother of four was shot to death Wednesday in front of her kids in Haifa; a man was killed Sunday in the central city of Lod in what was suspected of being part of an organized crime feud; and last Saturday, a man and a woman were killed along with their teenage daughter in a drive-by shooting in the northern town of Ailabun.

In total, 42 Arab citizens have been killed in Israel this year due to violent crime, according to the Abraham Initiative, a group that campaigns against violence in Arab society. Of those killed, 26 were under the age of 30.

The issue of violent crime within the Arab Israeli sector has been a central complaint of the community for a number of years, with 96 Arab Israelis killed in violent crime in 2018, the highest annual toll in recent memory.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced at a weekly cabinet meeting that Israel would implement a national plan to tackle the crime in the country’s Arab sector.

“I spoke this morning with the public security minister and we agreed on the formulation of a national plan to fight crime in the Arab community as soon as possible,” said Bennett during the meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. “We will do this in all dimensions: civil, economic and, of course, criminal. This is, first of all, the desire of the community itself, and it is of course an overall national interest.”

“The violence in the Arab community is a blight on the country, that has been neglected for many years,” Bennett added. “Responsibility for fighting this is on our shoulders. This is a national mission.”

The Islamist Ra’am Party, which joined Bennett’s government coalition, ran on a platform of tackling violence in Israel’s Arab communities. When Ra’am signed a coalition agreement in early June, it noted that Bennett and his coalition partner, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, agreed to provide NIS 2.5 million ($770,000) to fight violence and organized crime in Arab society.