Crime in the Palestinian Community inside Israel: A Community Problem or the Structure of Settler Colonialism?

Analytical reading of researcher Arij Sabbagh Khoury’s study: "Dismantling Colonial Epistemic Violence: Settler Colonialism, Violence, and Crime within the Palestinian Community in Israel"

The danger of the rise in crime and violence in the Palestinian community inside Israel does not stop at the numbers of victims, the widening circle of fear, and the lack of safety; it extends to a deeper question: how do we explain this phenomenon? Is it the result of a cultural or social malfunction within the Palestinian community, or is it linked to a broader political, economic, and historical structure that helps produce and sustain violence?

This is the central question from which researcher Arij Sabbagh Khoury’s study departs, University of California – Berkeley – United States of America... published in the journal Sociology Compass, volume 20, 2026, under the title “Dismantling Colonial Epistemic Violence.” The study does not limit itself to explaining crime, but also examines the ways in which academic and political frameworks produce knowledge about it, and whether they reveal the roots of the crisis or obscure a fundamental aspect of it!

From the rise in crime to the question of the structure of governance

Palestinians inside Israel continuously face accumulating forms of structural violence, including political and economic neglect, impoverishment... institutional discrimination, land expropriation, marginalization, and disparities in services and protection. In this context, since the beginning of the twenty-first century murders, armed violence, and organized crime have increased, alongside domestic violence and gender-based violence, including the killing of women!

The figures cited by the study highlight the imbalance in the distribution of homicide victims: although Palestinians constitute about one-fifth of Israel’s population, their proportion of victims reached 78% in 2023, 80% in 2024, and 81.3% in 2025!

The study indicates that homicide rates among Israeli Jews were higher during the period from 1980 to 1997, and then began to decline. By around 2010, the absolute numbers of homicide victims in the two communities converged, even though Palestinians then constituted only about 18% of the population. But that situation collapsed starting in 2021, when homicide rates among Palestinians rose, surpassing those in the Israeli Jewish community!

The researcher does not treat these figures as isolated statistical indicators, but calls for reading them in light of the historical, political, and economic conditions that shape Palestinians’ lives, the relationship between the state and society, and the disparity in security protection and institutional responses to violence!.

Three models for interpreting crime

The study presents three main models for interpreting violence and crime within the Palestinian community in Israel, differing in how they identify the causes of the phenomenon and the location of responsibility for it.

First: the cultural or pathological model.

This model links crime to characteristics presumed to be rooted in Arab culture, such as patriarchal and clan structures and methods of dispute resolution. Some studies have interpreted violence as a result of the transition from traditional to modern society, or as a reflection of internal cultural and social dysfunctions!

Researcher Sabbagh Khoury criticizes this interpretation because it shifts the center of responsibility from political and institutional structures to the society itself, treating culture as a fixed trait that explains behavior, while ignoring differing historical, economic, and political circumstances. It also does not, by itself, explain differences in violence rates between Arab and Palestinian communities living in different contexts!

Second: the ethnic minority model or the liberal model.

This model moves the analysis from culture to discrimination, marginalization, and inequality, linking crime to weak public investment, economic deprivation, institutional discrimination, lack of trust in the police, and low rates of homicide detection and resolution!

This shift represents progress over reductive cultural explanations because it highlights the responsibility of institutions and the social conditions surrounding crime. But the researcher sees the model as still limited when it is satisfied with demanding improved state performance and better public policies without questioning the political structure that, in her analysis, produces disparities in rights, security, and protection!

Reducing crime to poverty alone is also insufficient to explain its persistence amid improving economic conditions for some Palestinians; an individual may own a successful business, yet remain vulnerable to extortion if effective institutional protection is absent!

Third: the settler colonialism and apartheid model.

This is the framework the study defends: instead of viewing violence as a dysfunction within the Palestinian community, it calls for understanding crime within a broader historical and political context that includes the Nakba of 1948, expropriation of ownership, land confiscation, institutional discrimination, disparities in services and protection, and the nature of police treatment of Palestinian citizens!

From this perspective, violence is not seen as merely an internal societal malfunction, but as a phenomenon that should be examined in relation to the structure of governance and the policies that shape the environment in which crime spreads!

The researcher uses the concept of “organized colonial abandonment” to describe what she considers a mode of governance in which actual protection of Palestinians from crime declines, while security agencies continue to maintain a strong presence in monitoring and pursuing political activity!

The police, weapons, and disparity in protection

The study assigns a central role to the police, the proliferation of weapons, and the crisis of trust in institutions in explaining the rise in violence. Weak law enforcement, low rates of crime resolution, the spread of weapons, and declining public trust in institutions are not separate factors in this analysis!

The researcher argues that disparities in protection should not be understood simply as administrative shortcomings, but should be examined in light of the political structure that governs the relationship between the state and Palestinian citizens!.

Here one of the study’s most important ideas emerges: the question is not only about police efficiency, but also about how security and protection are distributed, and the extent to which Palestinian citizens enjoy the same level of institutional attention afforded to others!

This issue gains additional importance in light of the contradiction between improved economic conditions for some Palestinians and the continued lack of security. Rising incomes and expanding professional groups and the middle class do not guarantee protection of property and businesses from extortion and violence. Therefore, economic development alone is not enough to combat crime, nor are security solutions that are detached from addressing discrimination, deprivation, and weak institutions.

The Palestinian community is not a passive recipient

The study does not present the Palestinian community as incapable of confronting crime; it examines popular initiatives, local committees, protests, alongside the efforts of feminist and human rights organizations, research centers, and investigative journalism in documenting and analyzing the phenomenon.

These experiences reveal that the community produces knowledge from its direct experience and does not content itself with official and academic explanations. Local initiatives can contribute to prevention, mediation, and reintegration of individuals, and can provide solutions that originate from the community’s own needs.

The researcher pays special attention to violence against Palestinian women. She criticizes explanations that reduce it to patriarchal culture, because that can obscure institutional responsibility for providing protection, investigation, and accountability. Addressing gender-based violence requires social and legal measures, but it does not absolve the state of responsibility to protect victims and ensure the application of the law!

The study also criticizes certain directions within the feminist movement in the Israeli context, which she sees as having marginalized Palestinian women’s experiences or treated them within general frameworks, while overlooking state violence and settler colonial displacement!

Political discourse and the limits of cultural explanation

The study notes that the limits of the cultural model have become a matter of debate among Israeli researchers, who have begun to emphasize the importance of state policies, institutional discrimination, and economic marginalization in explaining crime. Nevertheless, cultural explanations remain present in public discourse, official narratives, and the Israeli media!.

The researcher cites statements by former Israeli Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan, in which he described the Arab community as highly violent and linked that to a culture of conflicts ending in the use of knives and firearms. She also criticizes Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, pointing to the absence of substantive measures during his tenure to address the rise in crime in the Palestinian community.!

According to the figures the study provided, approximately 1,469 Palestinian citizens were killed inside Israel between 2015 and 20 February 2026, and 785 cases, about 53% of the total, occurred since Ben-Gvir and the current Israeli government came to power. Also, 587 Palestinian citizens were killed between October 2023 and 20 February 2026, about 40% of the total killed since 2015!

This study presents these figures in the context of rising crime during that period, to affirm the necessity of examining the relationship between government policies and disparities in protection, rather than limiting the explanation of violence to the characteristics and culture of the society!

No sustainable security without accountability and equal protection

The chief value of the study lies in shifting the debate from the question “Why does the society practice violence?” to a broader question: what political, institutional, and historical conditions permit the spread of crime? And how do prevailing explanations affect our ability to understand and address the phenomenon? It also draws attention to the danger of explanations that place sole responsibility for crises on the society, because they may obscure the role of institutions and public policies, and turn a complex political and social problem into a supposed cultural flaw!

But adopting this framework does not mean denying internal factors, or absolving perpetrators of crimes, or considering all forms of violence as the direct result of a single policy..... Integrated analysis requires distinguishing between individuals’ responsibility for their actions, institutions’ responsibility for prevention, investigation, and accountability, and the social, economic, and political factors that may create conditions for the spread of crime!

The study essentially calls for rethinking the concept of security itself. Security is not merely the presence of police forces, but the ability of citizens to live, work, and move without fear, their confidence that the law will protect them, that crimes will be investigated and subjected to accountability, and that rights and protection are not privileges granted selectively!

In the end, the question the study raises deserves serious Palestinian debate: do prevailing explanations help us uncover the roots of the crisis and address them, or do they conceal some of these roots and reproduce the problem?

Building a safer society does not begin solely with pursuing criminals, despite the necessity of that, but also requires understanding the conditions that allow crime to expand, strengthening society’s capacity to confront it, building effective institutions subject to accountability, and ensuring equal protection for all. Accountability for crime does not conflict with accountability for institutions; rather, both are essential conditions for achieving sustainable security and genuine justice!