Since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli Arabs have murdered more Israeli Jews than have Palestinians from Judea and Samaria, according to an investigative report published on Tuesday.
In the 17 months since Hamas launched its terrorist invasion from Gaza, 15 Jews have been murdered by Arabs with Israeli citizenship or legal residency status, according to the Hebrew-language Hakol Hayehudi outlet.
The figure includes Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem, who hold legal residency status and can apply for a passport.
At the same time, Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria murdered 11 Jews in terrorist attacks, according to the report.
The figures gathered by the online outlet do not include terror attacks thwarted by Israel’s security forces, or which caused no fatalities.
The report comes after Monday’s deadly terrorist attack near Yokneam in the Lower Galilee, perpetrated by Karam Jabarin, a 25-year-old resident of Ma’ale Iron, an Arab locality in the Haifa District.
Following the attack, Israel’s Kan News cited officials from the country’s security establishment as expressing concerns about Israeli Arabs, in particular teenagers and young adults, who are increasingly involved in “terrorist attacks and subversive activities.”
Since the beginning of the war, the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) has investigated 80 cases involving Arab nationals of the country, according to Kan. There have been 26 cases of Israeli Arabs swearing allegiance to ISIS and other “global jihad organizations,” according to the broadcaster.
In total, the country’s internal security agency detained 177 Israeli Arabs for questioning in cases involving national security in 2024, Kan stated.
Since the start of the Iron Swords war 17 months ago, there has been a growing radicalization among segments of Israel’s Arab population.
A poll conducted in 2023 by the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Democratic Values and Institutions found that one third of Arab citizens disagreed with the statement that Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre “does not reflect Arab society, the Palestinian people and the Islamic nation.”
A June 2024 survey found that some 14.7% of Arab Israelis believe that Hamas should govern Gaza after the war, in direct opposition to one of Jerusalem’s key war aims. That represents approximately 308,700 Israeli citizens out of an Arab Israeli population of around 2.1 million.
