When Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the site of a deadly Jan. 1 shooting in Tel Aviv, allegedly perpetrated by an Israeli Arab citizen, some perceived the prime minister’s words as more offensive than comforting.
Two young men died in the Simta pub on Dizengoff Street, seven others were wounded, and a taxi driver was killed shortly after the suspect fled the scene. After expressing condolences to the families of the victims and welcoming condemnations from the Israeli Arab community, Netanyahu turned to a familiar theme.
“Among Israel’s Muslim citizens there are many elements that have come out against the violence and wish for full law enforcement in their communities,” he said in a Jan. 2 speech. “However, we all know that there is wild radical Islamic incitement against the State of Israel in the Arab sector. There is incitement in mosques, in the educational system and in social media.”
Netanyahu went on to outline his plans to “enforce the law” in Arab-majority areas and to eliminate the “two states of Israel” — one peaceful and law-abiding, the other rife with extremism and crime.
“Whoever wants to be Israeli should be an Israeli all the way, both in rights and in obligations, and the first and highest obligation is to obey the laws of the state,” he said.
Some viewed the remarks as hypocritical. Whatever lawlessness might exist in Israeli Arab communities is a result of the government’s failure to direct adequate resources to law enforcement there, they say. Others saw his comments as an attempt to blame all Israeli Arabs for the actions of the alleged killer, Nashat Melhem, 29, who is said to suffer from drug and mental problems. He was still at large as of press time.
“You can’t take one crazy person and use him to paint an entire population in the colors of ISIS, just like you can’t blame the whole Jewish population for the burning of children in Duma,” said Nasreen Hadad Haj-Yahya, co-director of the Israeli Democracy Institute’s Project for Arab-Jewish Relations, referring to the West Bank town where Jewish extremists are suspected of killing three members of a Palestinian family over the summer.
Inequities between Jewish and Arab citizens are an issue of longstanding grievance in Israel. According to government figures, the average Arab municipal budget is 10 percent lower than that of the weakest Jewish municipalities. Israeli Arabs also lag in educational achievement, income and various other socioeconomic metrics.
Just two days before the Jan. 1 attack, the government approved a five-year, $3.84 billion plan to improve economic development in the Arab sector and reduce gaps.
In his speech, Netanyahu implicitly acknowledged the discrepancy, saying he planned to increase law enforcement in the Arab sector, including more police stations.
“Going back historically, the notion was that Arab communities can police themselves,” said Guy Ben-Porat, an expert at Ben-Gurion University on relations between police and minority communities. “But over the past few years these old ways are breaking up. Arab elders have no more power, and this is where the state has to intervene.”
It’s not clear to what degree this state of affairs may have led to the shooting by Melhem. He had a history of violence, serving jail time for assaulting an Israeli soldier.
Violence by Israeli Arabs against Jews remains relatively rare, which partly accounts for the outrage at what some saw as Netanyahu’s charge of collective guilt. But even Haj-Yahya acknowledged a connection between the attack and the situation in the Israeli Arab sector.
“It’s like a jungle,” she said. “Anyone can do whatever they want, without paying a price. The police don’t do anything about the proliferation of weapons in the Arab community because they don’t care if Arabs kill each other. Only once the Jewish community begins to pay a price, then the state cares.”