Ahmad Abu Njem, an activist who was trying to set up a committee to bring about reconciliation between violent warring groups in his hometown of Jaffa, became the victim of a shooting by an unknown source. He was killed and a relative was injured on Jan. 24 when the assailant shot them at close range and then escaped. This crime brings the number of Palestinian citizens in Israel who were killed so far during 2021 — as a result of violent crimes within the Green Line — to six.  

From 2000-2020, the number of crime-related deaths reached 1,518. The year 2020 itself witnessed a record 106 such deaths — 12 more than 2019, which held the previous record with 94 mortalities. In the 20 years since the turn of the millennium, only 64 Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli security forces during various attempts to put down protests.

Speaking at a special Knesset session of the committee to combat violence in the Arab community in Israel last September, Knesset member Osama Saadi said Israeli police treat the killings of Arabs by Arabs differently than the killing of Jews by Arabs. “When there was a suspected shooting by an Arab against Israeli police, they were able to find the shooter within 24 hours,” he told the committee, which is headed by Knesset member Mansour Abbas from the predominantly Arab unified Joint List.

Abbas — who heads the Unified Arab Party, which is one of four components of the Joint List — has broken rank with the List by hinting that he is willing to cooperate with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in return for a more serious effort by the Israeli government and police to try and end this criminal plague that is dangerously escalating.