Man, 30, killed near Nazareth, in 6th fatality in Arab community in just over 24 hours

Reports say man gunned down in car in Yafia, police open homicide probe; senior police officials blame ‘total collapse of system’ for crime wave, say deterrence ‘no longer exists’

A man was gunned down in the Nazareth area early Monday morning, the sixth person from Israel’s Arab community to be killed in just over 24 hours.

The man, 30, was fatally shot in his car in the northern town of Yafia and paramedics declared him dead on the scene, according to Hebrew reports.

Police opened a homicide investigation into the incident.

Another man, 50, was seriously injured in a separate shooting in the central Arab city of Barta’a Sunday night, the Magen David Adom emergency medical service said.

The incidents follow the killings of five people in shootings and car bombings across Israel on Sunday, including an explosion in Jaffa that also wounded a six-year-old boy who was in the vehicle as his father was killed.

The deaths are attributed to gangland killings and family disputes. Monday’s shooting took the Arab community’s death toll this year to at least 142, according to the Abraham Initiatives watchdog.

That compares with 120 people during the same period last year, which itself marked the deadliest year for Arab society on record, with 252 Arab citizens killed, as a years-long crisis of violent crime beset the minority.

At the current rate, 2026 will surpass that record.

Homicides in Arab society soared to 244 in 2023 — more than double the previous year — and have since stayed high, with many blaming far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for inaction while in office.

Commenting on the spiking wave of deadly violence, a senior police official described the situation to the Haaretz daily as a “total collapse of the system,” placing the lion’s share of blame on Ben Gvir and his Police Commissioner Danny Levy.

“The worst thing is that no one in the police or in the system cares anymore,” the official said, adding that “the commissioner has disappeared, no one in the police even thinks of resigning, the attorney general, who is the head of the enforcement system, is not banging on the table. The streets are burning, but there is no special effort, and that is the worst thing, the indifference.”

Another senior law enforcement source told the newspaper that the main problem is lack of deterrence: “Deterrence is collapsing, it no longer exists. There is nothing that deters them: not the police, not the ridiculous punishment of the courts, and not anyone else.”

Without deterrence, “criminals allow themselves to do whatever they want, at whatever time they want, and to whoever they want,” the source added.