Violence and Crime Among the Palestinian Minority in Israel: The Shattering of the Indigenous

In the last two decades the rates of crime and violence among the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel have increased dramatically. This book is the first to describe, analyze and understand this phenomenon.

The authors identify the Israeli state policies that have dismantled Palestinian society and show how these have undermined or eliminated the authoritative figures and social structures that once supported and controlled this community. The rising violence in Arab society is depicted as a clear example of the success of Israeli efforts to weaken Arab society from within, where the community has lost its social, legal and political structures and its ability to organize itself or act as a collective. But in making this argument, the book also shows how the Palestinian minority can combat and overcome crime and violence in society, namely by resisting the superstructure of ethnic supremacy and finding new or lost points of reference that can deal with societal challenges.

The book is based on the testimonies of activists who have attempted to combat violence worldwide and opinion polls from Palestinians in Israel to determine how they think the violence should be confronted.

Nohad ’Ali is Senior Lecturer and Researcher in the Department of Sociology at Western Galilee College, Israel and head of the cluster for societal equality at Samuel Neaman Institute, Technion, Israel.

As’ad Ghanem is Professor & Senior Lecturer at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel and a member of Palestine Forum Network.