Police data confirms Arab homicide rate more than doubled in 2023

Arab Israeli homicide numbers more than doubled in 2023 amid rising communal violence, according to data released on Tuesday by the Israeli Police.

The 126-page document confirmed an already well-documented surge of violence, coinciding with far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir’s accession to power as national security minister. Murders had been on a steady rise for years, but spiked since 2023.

For the past five years, police have put out an annual summary of their official crime data. After encountering pushback from an Israeli organization for tarrying on the publication of their 2023 report, law enforcement came through on Tuesday and released the statistics.

Along with a marked uptick in homicide cases, the report also found that the number of female murder victims had crested and Israelis’ overall feelings of personal safety plummeted.

Of the 274 criminal homicide cases filed over the course of 2023, 227 occurred in the “non-Jewish sector,” referring to Arab Israeli communities. Murders in Arab society comprised more than 80% of the year’s homicides. The previous year saw 139 murders, with 104 in the Arab community.

The Abraham Initiatives, a shared society organization that tracks violent crime in Arab society, counted 244 Arab murder victims in 2023, 16 more than the police number. The police report noted that some of the cases it counted included more than one victim, and did not provide the numbers for individual victims in the report.

The trend didn’t abate last year. The Abraham Initiatives recently counted some 230 Arab Israeli murder victims in 2024. Police have yet to publish official data for the past year.

The organization attributed the persisting crime wave to continued police neglect, citing cuts in funding earmarked for fighting violence in Arab society.

Just two days after police released their report on 2023, the crime epidemic plaguing Arab society claimed its first victim of 2025 early Thursday morning, when a 51-year-old man was shot dead in the central city of Tira.

“We call on the government to define the fight against crime as a national priority and treat it accordingly. It is the state’s duty to ensure personal security for all its citizens,” the Abraham Initiatives said in a statement responding to the incident.

This spike in murder cases in Arab society followed a brief dip under Ben Gvir’s predecessor, Internal Security Minister Omer Barlev, who prioritized combating violence in Arab communities after the homicide rate in 2021 reached then-unprecedented levels at 126 — far lower than now.

Though much lower, the murder rate among Jewish Israelis, which hovered between 30 to 35 from 2019 to 2022, also increased, to 47, in 2023. The murder of women reached a peak with 33 reported victims, in contrast to the years 2017-2022, during which the number ranged from 5 to 15 per year. In around 40% of the cases, the perpetrator was the woman’s partner or spouse.

The Israel Observatory on Femicide, which raises awareness about the killing of women based on their gender, found that 41 women overall were murdered this past year, surpassing 2023. The watchdog also noted that police are much more likely to charge a suspect in the killing of a Jewish woman than when an Arab woman is the victim.

The document also noted a slight decrease in overall criminal cases for a period following the Hamas terror group’s October 7 onslaught. When divided up, the number of police investigations opened in the first three quarters of 2023 stood slightly higher than the 2022 figure, but this trend reversed following the Hamas massacre. The number of police cases opened fell in almost every district post-October 7, with the glaring exception of the West Bank, where the figure rose by 36%.

A public opinion survey tacked onto the crime statistics for 2023 revealed that Israelis’ trust in police had risen on the whole, from 53% in 2022 to 61%. Heightened trust in the police was a solely Jewish phenomenon, with the level of faith placed in law enforcement by Arab Israelis sinking slightly — from 35% to 33%.

Meanwhile, feelings of insecurity rose across the board, with only 65% of respondents saying they felt safe in their area of residence, compared to 76% in 2022. The report noted that October 7 had likely impacted the public’s views.

Diana Bletter contributed to this report.