Ramping up protests over deadly crime, Arab society brings struggle to Jewish street |
Saturday night, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv in an outpouring of frustration against the government. They marched from Hostages Square to Habima Theater, waving black flags and accusing the state of leaving its citizens for dead.
Habima’s vast square has seen its fair share of Saturday night rallies against the government, largely driven by Tel Aviv’s large swath of secular liberal Jews, distraught over the country’s right-wing turn under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This time, the usual suspects made up only half the crowd. The other half, and those leading the protest, were from the country’s Arab minority, most of whom had come to the coastal city on chartered buses from across Israel.
For the last two weeks, daily protests and strikes have swept through the Arab community, part of a burgeoning struggle against rampant gang violence, which Arab leaders claim is fueled by state neglect.
The political awakening comes years into a crime wave that has brought murder to Arab communities at unprecedented levels, with 252 killed last year, a nearly 300% rise from 2017.
It was sparked late last month after Arab shop owners in the northern city of Sakhnin went on strike to protest the mafia protection rackets extorting them. The action spread to other Arab towns and days later, the streets of Sakhnin filled with tens of thousands of mostly Arab protesters demanding that something be done to rid their towns of the scourge of violent crime.
The Sakhnin rally was not the first held by Arabs to protest crime, but it was among the largest, and unlike many previous protests, came as part of what appears to be a uniquely organized and sustained effort to bring public pressure to bear on the government over the issue. Yet like the others, it still went mostly unnoticed by the country’s Jewish majority.
The Saturday night protest aimed to change that, broadcasting a simple message to Israel’s Jews and specifically the political opposition: You can no longer ignore this, just as you could not ignore the hostage crisis, the judicial overhaul, the cost of living, or any of the other issues that have brought the masses to Tel Aviv’s streets.
Jamal Zahalka, who heads the High Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, which organized the protest, called Jewish attendance “fully an act of civic solidarity.”
“The war hasn’t extinguished civic solidarity [between Jews and Arabs],” said Zahalka, a former lawmaker for the hardline Balad party. “There is hope that Jews and Arabs can work together not just against crime, but also on other issues.”
Though the protest started as a grassroots movement, Zahalka is hoping that by taking the reins and bringing the Arab community’s most burning issue to the Jewish, anti-Netanyahu street, they can gain the kind of wide consensus needed to put real pressure on the government. Saturday night’s rally was a preview for the type of movement that Zahalka is betting can shut down the country in a major, days-long strike backed by both Arabs and Jews.
Looking out toward the crowd at Habima, one saw a disparate mix of Arabic and Hebrew signs emblazoned with slogans implicating the government and law enforcement in the spiraling violence.
In a somewhat surreal union, Arab protesters donned keffiyehs, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, while handfuls of Jewish protesters waved Israeli flags. Most flags, though, were painted solid black — a symbol of Arab society’s escalating struggle against crime.
“This is the largest Jewish-Arab protest in Israel’s history; there has been nothing like it in recent memory,” said Thair Abu Ras, a political analyst at the Jerusalem-based Van Leer Institute. “The strategy now [for Arab leadership] is to make sure that the struggle doesn’t die out, to keep this issue at the top of the Israeli political agenda.”
The current push against crime began in the northern city of Sakhnin, when Ali Zbedat, the owner of a well-known supermarket chain, went public about having been targeted in several shootings near his business, the latest of which was caught on security camera footage.
Last year was the deadliest year for Israel’s Arab minority, with 252 people killed in crime-related violence. The trend has gotten even worse in 2026 so far, with 37 Arab citizens........