The answer to that question would depend on who you ask it seems, but the whole issue of the violence in the Israeli Arab community is much more complicated than that. And, with the number of murders this year passing 95 people (and some claim a hundred), the question definitely needs to be asked and if a real solution to the problem must be found, not only the police or the Arab community itself should be made to answer the question.
The crime in the Israeli Arab community has reached proportions that remind of the period of the Mafia in the U.S. in the middle of the last century and crime families control villages and towns and will use them as battleground with rival clans that always end bloody and sometimes takes the lives of innocent bystanders. But how do crime families and clans start to operate with impunity? In a normal ordered society, a thief is pursued by the police, arrested and send to jail, and a murderer even more so. The problem starts when this simple rule of law is interrupted and crime becomes a way of life for some, because nobody stops them. What in most cases started as economic hardship becomes a life for many of these criminals and they organize and increase their activities, moving from petty theft to drugs and worse.
If the police do not intervene vigorously, and in Israel’s Arab community they clearly haven’t, the situation will and has deteriorated rapidly and develop a community where crime is a way of life and a livelihood. And the proliferation of criminal activity rapidly leads to turf wars, the results of which we now almost see daily.
So where was the police all this time? Did they even know it was happening? Did they care at all? There is not much use in trying to analyze the activity of the police in the Arab community and how it resulted in the development of the current crime wave. And the solution, if there is any (and it definitely will not be a short-term one) must be looked for in a much broader framework than just the police.
Let’s look at the Arab community itself. After all, it should not be forgotten that the ones killing the Arabs are Arabs themselves, and in most cases criminals killing each other. The community has not been able to stop the development of the crime gangs, not on the municipal level and not on the family level. Mothers will cry but the killings will continue. As a business decision or as a revenge, but it is more and more seen as the ultimate solution.
Most of the Arab population, who are still innocent bystanders, did not turn to the police for help in fighting the gangs. It may be fear, it may be Arab solidarity, but most likely it is a lack of trust. A lack of believe that the police will be able or willing to do anything, stops most people from turning to the police for help even if they do not have an alternative.
Now that it appears that the government is stepping in (and we still will need to see anything really happening), there is reason to believe that at least some action will be taken. Of course the formation of a committee (the preferred choice of Israeli governments when they prefer to do nothing|) is hardly encouraging, especially since it does not appear to be willing or able to tackle the real issue. It is very important to start to control weapon possession, illegal weapon trade, and increase punishment for both the illegal possession and use of weapons, but it is only a very limited aspect of the problem.
If we want to really work towards the eradication of crime in the Arab community, both the police and the Arab population will need to change their attitude. It is imperative for any measure of success in the fight against the crime gangs, that the population regains the trust in the only force that can and should deal with it: the police. But such trust does not fall out of the sky. The police will have to first of all involve itself in trust building. The population will need to see and believe that the (Israeli) police is there for them also, and can be turned to and relied upon to protect them and be there for them when they are so sorely needed. This implies that the police will need to see the Arab community as a part of the Israeli community. Not as some outside entity that we have to tolerate. The change of attitude must include the cessation of the use of the term “Arab Community”. It is the Israeli community that needs the care, attention and protection of the police and making the distinction between Jewish and Arab communities only results in a deepening of the rift that already exists.
Because, let there be no mistake. The police are not an exception in the separate treatment of the Arab community. Israeli society (the Jewish part) has always looked upon the Arab population as something outside of the “real” Israel. Something that needs to be tolerated (at least for now) but is not and never will or should be part of the “Israeli Community”. This attitude, that has found ample expression in the treatment of the community by government bodies, is the core of the problem that the committee needs to attack. Illegal weapons may and should be confiscated and the owners punished, but if the attitude of the police AND the general (Jewish) population doesn’t change, the problem will never be solved. Weapons can be bought or stolen anywhere. Mutual trust is much harder to come by, but it will solve problems at a much more fundamental level and will have a much better chance of long-lasting success.
So, indeed, Arab lives matter. But we, Jews and Arabs alike will need to work towards making that slogan obsolete and replace it with “Israeli Lives Matter”. It will make a world of difference.
I hope you found this article interesting and I welcome any comments you may have.
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