Israel’s Arab towns are facing outsized violence and organized crime, with last year marking the sector’s highest annual murder rate by far. That violence is taking its toll on young people, according to new research by Dr. Rajda Alnabulsi, a professor of sociology at Ruppin College and head of the school’s Arab sector affairs. “The young generation in Arab society is a generation of despair,” Alnabulsi told Davar. “They don’t have hope, but they don’t want to give up on a better future.”
For the past several years, Alnabulsi has conducted research on how Israel’s Arab sector has dealt with the violence it’s plagued by. Research took place in several cohorts of young people aged 18-28 as well as groups of adults and parents.
“The goal was to understand how people relate to the problem of violence and crime, how they explain the escalation, how they experience its consequences, and how they deal with it,” Alnabulsi explained. “These are two different generations. I could identify what was common as well as what was unique. The young people don’t want to give up on their future. The parents want to protect their children, to guard their resources for the young generation.”
Last year was the most violent year ever for Israel’s Arab sector. In 2023, 244 Arab Israelis were murdered, more than double the 2022 number and drastically up from the 61 Arab Israelis murdered in 2014. According to research from the Taub Center for Policy Studies in Israel, Arabs Israelis are 13 times more likely to be murdered than Jewish Israelis.
Many Arab Israelis attribute the rise in violence in part to underpolicing by a state that views Arabs as second-class citizens. Between January 2022 and April 2023, 75% of suspected murders in the Jewish sector were solved in contrast to only 19% of suspected murders in the Arab sector, according to police statistics published by Yedioth Ahronoth.
According to Alnabulsi, the violence and crime rampant in the Arab sector reduce the opportunities for young people to develop themselves and take on leadership roles. Many of the victims and the perpetrators of violence are young. But young people, Alnabulsi insisted, “on the one want hand to develop themselves, and on the other hand see the neglect and the exclusion.”
She said that young Arab Israelis feel abandoned by the government and the police, quoting one young Arab Israeli as saying, “The police don’t do their job, don’t protect us,” and another as saying, “They close cases [without solving them]. If this was happening in the Jewish sector, they would catch the criminals. They abandon us and they blame us.”
Young Arab Israelis also criticize mass media, which they say relates to Arab violence as an internal problem rather than a national problem of Israeli society, Alnabulsi said. Violence in is seen as characteristic of Arab society rather than characteristic of the socioeconomic status and structural exclusion imposed on Israel’s Arab minority.
“Young people see the media’s condescending way of relating to it,” Alnabulsi said. “There’s a gap between the state’s declarations and its acts on the ground. Young people attribute this to negligence on the part of state institutions, but also to a lack of responsibility.”
But the young generation also makes room for internal criticism, Alnabulsi said, demanding that Arab leaders in politics, religion, education, and other fields take responsibility over the problems in Arab society. “According to the young people, Arab society needs to organize itself to prevent violence, to equip the young generation with tools and skills for dealing with crises and hardships, to raise awareness for dealing with challenges and to open new horizons for the young generation,” she said.
She recalled one young person saying that the parents’ generation doesn’t understand what today’s youth are dealing with. “Your home is protected [with a bomb shelter], but the community space is violence and unsafe,” she quoted the young person as saying. “We’re all vulnerable and not protected. Going beyond the four walls of your house to the public space makes you not protected. Responsibility over the environment also lies with the state and its institutions. We’re not giving up on our rights.”
Alnabulsi said that the role of the state is to understand the violence plaguing Arab society as a national problem of the first order, not a problem confined to one sector. “In the young peoples’ eye, addressing this problem requires wider responsibility from the state and its institutions as well,” she said. “It requires an end to the racist and exclusionary approach and mandates investment and defense.”
Young Arab Israelis aspire to a better future, Alnabulsi said. “It’s a generation for whom its important to pave their own path, to actualize themselves and to be in leadership roles in society,” she explained. “But trust, belonging to society, and continuing to be part of the collective they belong to is also important to them. Arab society is undergoing many changes, and young people want to make their own way as individuals. The two generations are in a process and are struggling to digest the change.”
Those who aren’t employed, in education, or in training, a group known as NEETs, pay the greatest price for these social changes, she said. “They’re at risk, in a violent environment that endangers their future. NEETs are on the margins of society—invisible and unseen,” she said. “Men especially are pushed to the margins and dragged toward violence. Young people see here a social problem that demands treatment.”
She noted that many young Arab Israelis are also critical of the underequipped and underinspired school system.
Alongside all the criticism of the state and the society they live, young people also want to play a part in fixing the problems,” Alnabulsi said.
“We want to pave the correct path to actualize ourselves and to be integrated into leadership roles,” she quoted another Arab youth as saying. “That’s the path to change. We won’t agree to be on the sidelines.”
