Itamar Ben-Gvir. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

i24 News – The Avraham Initiatives Association on Sunday published the semi-annual monitoring report, which revealed that 111 victims lost their lives in connection with Arab public violence and crime in the first half of 2023.

This is an increase of 134 percent compared to last year. The report warned that if the situation doesn’t improve, “we are expecting 222 victims at the end of the year.”

“111 Arab-Palestinians lost their lives in crimes related to violence in the first six months of 2023, 2.3 times more than the corresponding period last year, when there were 47 victims,” the report said.

Most (64, 58 percent) of the victims are aged 30 or younger, of which six were aged 0-17. In the absolute majority of cases (99, 89 percent) the victim was killed with a firearm.

The youngest victims were one and two years old when they died, and the oldest was 71. Among the deceased were seven women.

The months of May and June were the bloodiest with 25 victims killed each month. The region with the most number of deaths is the Galilee (42 percent), while 6 percent of victims were killed in east Jerusalem.

The Avraham Initiatives, which is the leading NGO registering the wave of violence in the Arab sector, stated that “2023 is a record year for crime” and urged the government to take measures.

“Neither the National Guard, nor administrative arrests, nor the Shin Bet will work, but will only weaken the personal security of all citizens in Israel, and especially the Arab citizens, whose personal security is in any case poor to non-existent,” it added, calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to appoint a professional official to resolve the issue. “Every day that Ben-Gvir remains in his position is a day when our security is personally neglected,” the NGO said, referring to Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.