In response, President Herzog held an emergency meeting with Jewish and Bedouin leaders on Wednesday, saying it was “unthinkable” that such violence had been allowed to escalate.<\/p>\n
“[Arab-Israelis] deserve to live in security like Jewish citizens in the country,” he said, calling the extended crime wave within the Arab community a “national catastrophe and national challenge”.<\/p>\n
Likewise, during a tour of southern Israel this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu said the Negev region was “out of control” and backed a policing crackdown.<\/p>\n
“We will rein it in, and an important operation by the Israel Police has already begun, in conjunction with other forces,” he declared.<\/p>\n
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir added: “Despite the efforts of criminal elements to intimidate us we are not flinching.<\/p>\n
“We will continue the operation throughout the Negev as long as necessary, with the goal of restoring security to residents.”<\/p>\n
However, some Bedouin\u00a0leaders have protested the police operation, claiming it amounts to a form of collective punishment for the actions of a violent minority within the community, emboldened by periods of police neglect.<\/p>\n
The Israel Police has responded by claiming that prior enforcement operations have been hampered by criminal intimidation and, consequently, a lack of cooperation from the local community.<\/p>\n
Authorities have so far arrested 10 suspects, all residents of\u00a0Arara Banegev, in connection with the shootings and other murders.<\/p>\n
Last year, officials recorded 255 violent deaths in the Arab-Israeli community, a record high, with 2026 experiencing a similar rate thus far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In response, President Herzog held an emergency meeting with Jewish and Bedouin leaders on Wednesday, saying it was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1157,85,46,20089,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-231551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-arab-israelis","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-negev","12":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}