Report: Terror groups trying to use Arab Israeli crime gangs to carry out attacks
Ministers told that weapons pilfered from Gaza war are making their way into Arab community and posing a serious threat to national security
Security officials have warned government ministers that terror groups are trying to utilize crime organizations in Israel’s Arab community in order to carry out nationalistic attacks in the Jewish state, casting the proliferation of illegal weapons as a tangible threat to national security, the Haaretz daily reported Sunday.
Citing unnamed sources, the outlet said terror groups from abroad have already attempted to direct such attacks, often without the local crime groups knowing they were acting on the terrorists’ behalf. The report did not give any specific details of such incidents.
Haaretz said the security officials who briefed ministers highlighted the ongoing failure to rein in an unprecedented wave of violent crime in the Arab community, coupled with wartime proliferation and increasing availability of illegal weapons in the community. Among those who attended the meetings was National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is responsible for the Israel Police.
“The crime organizations are a strategic threat to national security,” ministers were told. “The state is near the point of no return in its ability to deal with the phenomenon.”
“We see terror entities that are ‘riding’ on the platform that crime creates,” a senior security official told the newspaper.
The official said that for Arab citizens, the ruling authority is not the government but crime groups. “This is a real danger.”
There are believed to be hundreds of thousands of weapons in the Arab community, including many considered of high quality, and prices are dropping due to an influx made available by the ongoing war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The war, triggered by the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, has seen massive army reserve call-ups amid operations in Gaza involving tens of thousands of combat troops.
According to the report, enforcement services have in recent months noticed a steady leak of weapons from IDF combat units to crime groups, including anti-tank weapons and even advanced shoulder-launched anti-tank systems such as the locally produced Matador.
“The market is overflowing because of the war,” a senior law enforcement official told Haaretz.
The low prices and easy availability of war materials have brought about an increased use of more lethal weaponry in the criminal world.
“Instead of a stun grenade they are now tossing fragmentation grenades, and whole militias have weapons,” the official said.
Due to the transfer of advanced weapons to the criminal world, the Shin Bet security agency is in favor of legislation to set stiff minimum sentences for those caught in possession of illegal weapons, Haaretz said, with one senior official in the agency proposing eight to ten years in prison. The official reportedly hoped that the threat of a lengthy time behind bars would act as a deterrent or even encourage some to surrender the stolen weapons they are holding. The proposal has been passed to the Justice Ministry for preparation as a bill and some ministers have reportedly already said they would back it.
In 2021 the law was changed to require courts to hand down a sentence of at least a quarter of the maximum for weapons offenses with the alteration being made at the time due to a sharp rise in violent crime in the Arab community.
The warning to ministers came amid a spike in violent crime in the Arab community that saw 26 homicides in July alone, and 134 deaths since the beginning of the year. By comparison, there were 138 homicides in the Arab community during the whole of 2023.
A recent meeting of the Ministerial Committee for Arab Community Affairs was told that organized crime groups are operating a form of “shadow government” in the Arab community including a gray market and their own brand of judicial procedures and punishments, Haaretz reported.
