Ammar and Omar, two young brothers, get up early this Thursday in January 2022 and will jump on their father Mohammed Hujairat’s bed to wake him up. He cannot blame his two beloved children, especially Ammar, his first son after seventeen years of marriage to his wife Aïcha, who had previously given him four daughters. The huge house exudes tranquility and the large village of Bir Al-Maksur the tranquility of a winter morning. Here live the heirs of those who escaped the Nakba, the forced emigration of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 – half the population of historic Palestine. Today, two million Palestinians live within Israel’s internationally recognized borders.
Father and son finally get up. Mohammed, a construction worker, has to go to work. Ammar is disappointed. “I’m mad at you,” he protests. “Those were the last words he spoke to me,” recalls Mohammed Hujairat. He leaves. The child’s aunt takes him to a park with her cousins. Ammar consoles himself. In a video sent to his father, he says: “Dad, I love you. About ten seconds later he was killed by a stray bullet. A gunman had come to shell a dump truck on the site above, as part of a standoff between contractors and a background to theft of materials.
Aïcha Hujairat and her second son, Omar, at their home in Bir Al-Maksur, August 12, 2023. LUCIEN LUNG / RIVA-PRESS FOR THE WORLD
Mohammed Hujairat prays in the living room of his home in Bir Al-Maksur, August 12, 2023. LUCIEN LUNG / RIVA PRESS FOR DIE WORLD
Family feuds, disputes between landlords, unpaid loans, arms and drug dealing, extortion: In Israel’s Palestinian communities, escalating levels of commercial crime are accompanied by escalating levels of deadly violence. According to Abraham Initiatives, an association working to promote equality between Jews and Arabs, 157 Israeli Arabs have been killed in this type of reckoning since the beginning of the year, compared to 116 in the 12 months of 2022 citizens. . According to a Knesset report, 70% of people who died by murder in Israel between 2018 and 2022 are Palestinians, while this community makes up only 20% of that state’s population.
On a street in Umm Al-Fahm, Israel August 15, 2023. The murals that adorn this wall are the work of Kifah Ghbarieh, an artist who lost seven members of her family to violence in the Arab community. LUCIEN LUNG / RIVA PRESS FOR “THE WORLD”
If the numbers exploded from 2018, then the causes of this phenomenon are old. Palestinian communities have historically been neglected by Israel. According to Adalah, an organization that campaigns for the rights of Israel’s Arab minority, there are 16 police stations in the country’s 80 or so Arab towns (villages and hamlets are not included in this category). “Government institutions have never really been present in these areas. This has allowed small criminal organizations to thrive,” says Moran Maimoni, co-director of public affairs at Abraham Initiatives.
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