Three killed amid alarming rise in crime among Israel's Palestinian community

Three Palestinian-Israeli relatives have been shot dead in the city of Baqa al-Gharbiyya, bringing the total number of murders in the marginalised Palestinian-Israeli community to 14 this month.

MENA

2 min read

The New Arab Staff

20 December, 2020

Three Palestinian-Israeli relatives were killed in Baqa al-Gharbiyya on Friday

There has been an alarming rise in the number of murders in Palestinian communities in Israel, The New Arab’s sister site Arab 48 reported on Saturday.

Fourteen Palestinians living in Israel have been murdered since the beginning of December, including the Friday killing of three relatives from Baqa al-Gharbiyya, a Palestinian-Israeli city with approximately 30,000 inhabitants.

They were identified as Amir Abu Hussein, 25, and brothers Ahmed and Mohammed Jamil, aged 33 and 41 respectively.

Abu Hussein was shot by an unknown assailant on Friday in the shop he owned and taken to hospital, where he died on Saturday morning, hospital sources said.

Ahmed and Mohammed Jamil were shot dead while they were accompanying the ambulance taking Abu Hussein, who was their nephew, to the hospital. They were following the ambulance in their private car on the outskirts of Baqa al-Gharbiyya when they were killed.

Eyewitnesses said that the ambulance was also fired at.

Israeli police have issued statements in the past saying that they were investigating murders in the Palestinian-Israeli community but Arab 48 reported that they were stalling in their duty to find the perpetrators of these crimes.

A total of 98 Palestinian-Israelis, including 16 women, have been murdered since the beginning of 2020, Arab 48 reported.

Twitter Post

Those murdered since the beginning of December include Sobhiya Tatour, a 73-year-old woman and her 39-year-old son Salam. Tatour’s other son Ahmed was arrested for the murder.

Unsolved murders, also called "mystery murders", have been a dangerous phenomenon in the Palestinian-Israeli community for the past two years.

Palestinian-Israelis are Palestinians who remained on their land during the creation of Israel in 1948.

They make up over 20% of Israel's population and have Israeli citizenship but many say they are systematically discriminated against in public life.

Palestinian-Israeli members of the Knesset have severely criticised Israeli authorities over their failure to tackle the murder phenomenon, saying that police are indifferent to the lives of Palestinian citizens and respond much more proactively when Israeli Jews are murdered.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay connected