A Palestinian Israeli Crime Wave
The little-known story of Palestinian Israeli crime gangs and the questions it raises about the Israeli police response.
There is a dark underworld of Palestinian crime syndicates operating within Israel.
Al Jazeera Arabic’s Tamer Almisshal examines this rarely reported but growing phenomenon.
He meets victims, gangsters and those attempting to keep a lid on a spiralling trend of lawlessness directed at Palestinian citizens of Israel.
He asks how the organised crime gangs work, who protects them, where they source their weapons, why murder rates are increasing and, importantly, what the Israeli police are doing to protect the Palestinian citizens of Israel?
Some accuse Israeli authorities of turning a blind eye, or worse, colluding with and infiltrating the gangs for political reasons, while Benjamin Netanyahu announced a multimillion-dollar initiative to combat these crimes.
But until little has changed and Palestinian victims add this problem to their already challenging lives in Israel.