It may have been a year and a half ago, but nobody in Lod has forgotten the murder of Anas al-Wahwah. The 18-year-old went shopping with his mother on Saturday afternoon and while he was waiting for her, someone approached the car and shot him dead. Al-Wahwah was not armed or involved in Lod's complex ecosystem of underworld crime. He was an outstanding student who also volunteered for the Magen David Adom ambulance service. Just before his murder, the Ramon Foundation recognized his contribution to the young leadership program in the city.

Although al-Wahwah’s murder remains unsolved, the general assumption is that he was another victim of the ongoing feud between members of his extended family and the Musrati family. In October 2020, Juma al-Wahwah was shot to death while sitting in his car. Almost exactly a year later, Hussam Musrati, 23, was shot dead on Hahalutz Street in the city, and three weeks after that, Anas al-Wahwah was killed. The shockwaves that spread through the town after his murder were not enough to halt the cycle of revenge, and in August last year, another member of the extended al-Wahwah family, Juma’s brother Arpan, was also gunned down. There is no sign that the bloodshed will end any time soon.

Anas al-Wahwah is just one of 70 people murdered in the past ten years in Lod – a town of slightly less than 90,000 residents. Over the past few months, the city has enjoyed a period of relative calm – but that has more to do with luck than anything else. Shootings in the city did not stop, but between the middle of October 2022 and the end of January 2023, there were no homicides in Lod. On January 27, that luck ran out when Fares Abu Katifan was shot to death. Since then, five more people have been murdered in the city.

Given the high level of violence in the city, Shomrim decided to map the homicides committed in Lod from the start of 2013 until the present day. The 66 cases about which we were able to collate significant data about paint a clear picture: most of the homicides took place in an area around the same size as Central Park, located in the east of the city. Almost all the victims are Arabs. In the dozen cases where the victim was Jewish, the police solved all of them; in cases where the victim was Arab, the police managed to solve around 22 percent —less than one quarter.

The Israel Police refused to share a complete list of the murder victims with Shomrim. The two documents obtained from the police by the Movement for Freedom of Information contain contradictory information about the number of murders. The analysis, therefore, is based on police and Magen David Adom reports in real time, media reports in Hebrew and Arabic, and data collected from civil society organizations. Even if the actual number is unclear, the bottom line is: It is doubtful that any city of a similar size in Israel has suffered as many murders in the past decade as Lod.

Over the past months, we have spent many long days on the bleeding streets of Lod: we were at crime scenes, met with victims’ families, and spoke to activists in the city and law-enforcement officials. We went beyond the almost weekly headline saying that another body has been found in Lod and police suspect murder. We mainly tried to understand what is really happening there and how a city in central Israel – adjacent to the country’s only international airport and ten miles from Tel Aviv – became the murder capital of Israel.

Murder cases in Lod

‘Feuding Families don’t Check if You’re a Criminal or Not’

At first glance, the reasons for all the violence in Lod are apparent: a vicious cycle of neglect, crime, and lack of cooperation with the law-enforcement authorities, which feeds itself repeatedly in an endless loop. But after taking a closer look and visiting each red dot on the map, the picture is far more complex and charged.

In the war between the Musrati and the al-Wahwah families, police have, as of today, solved just one murder case – that of Arpan al-Wahwah. The suspect’s, Ayman Musrati, trial is ongoing in the Lod District Court. The indictment against Musrati states explicitly that the two families “have been engaged in a bloody feud that had led to fatalities on both sides.” In the meantime, incidentally, the defendant’s 30-year-old brother, Sabri Musrati, who worked as a gardener, was shot to death while in his car. His 8-year-old niece was sitting in the back seat at the time.

So, what has all this got to do with a student who was gunned down while waiting in the car for his mother or a gardener murdered in front of his niece? The answer, it seems, is mawaja.

“The word mawaja comes from the Arabic word for pain,” explains Samah Salaime, a social worker who has been active in the city for over 20 years. “What that means is that the family is the soft underbelly, the place where you exert pressure when you want to inflict pain. If I want to hurt you, I take out someone unexpected. That hurts the most.”

The upshot of mawaja is that criminals will not necessarily try to hurt only those who might be armed as part of their feud. In fact, the contrary is true. Very often, they will target people who have no connection to the criminal world – people who are considered successful and may even have some public profile. Anyone who happens to have the wrong family name can become the target of an assassination attempt, even – perhaps especially – if they have nothing to do with the conflict. This phenomenon does not limit itself, however, to interfamilial feuds. Recently, for example, a well-known educator was shot and lightly injured. According to people familiar with the case, the attack was intended to send a message to a relative of the victim, who was in debt to the wrong people. According to these sources, the educator has nothing to do with the debt. But the principle of mawaja dragged him as well into the grim statistics of gun violence in the city.

“The word mawaja comes from the Arabic word for pain,” explains Samah Salaime, a social worker who has been active in the city for over 20 years. “What that means is that the family is the soft underbelly, the place where you exert pressure when you want to inflict pain. If I want to hurt you, I take out someone unexpected. That hurts the most

It turns out, however, that the feud between the Musrati and al-Wahwah families is not even the most lethal in Lod over the past decade. In December 2020, a national outcry occurred when 15-year-old Omar Abu Saluk was murdered by assassins on Route 6 while riding in a police convoy that was supposed to protect him. Eight Azbarga family members, who live close to the Abu Saluk family in Lod, have been charged with his murder.

The tender age of the victim, coupled with the daring and the operational capability displayed by the assassins, have ensured that Omar’s murder is etched in the collective memory – but the conflict between those two families has claimed an additional eight victims besides Omar. What caused all of this? In Lod, the word is that the family feud began with an argument over the use of the local mosque. Harsh words were exchanged, and honor and ego were hurt, which sparked a vengeful conflict that continues even today.

Jasan Munir, a political activist in Lod, believes that most of these blood feuds have economic origins, primarily against the backdrop of gray-market loans. Such loans are prevalent in certain parts of Arab society in Israel, where people find it hard to get loans from the usual banking systems. Neglect, poor infrastructure, and a profound lack of faith in the state – especially the police – mean that a dispute between neighbors or even a squabble between children can become a violent and prolonged war.

“For example, because there’s no infrastructure, you sometimes get a dozen homes hooked up to one electric meter,” Munir explains. “One woman told me she got an electricity bill for 14,000 shekels [$4,000]. She wanted to split the bill among all the households using her electricity, but one of them refused, saying point-blank that he wouldn’t pay. That’s how a feud starts between different families. And because there’s no one to deal with it, the conflict escalates and escalates.

“When I was a kid, there was one case when an entire family was almost wiped out because of a soccer match between children,” Munir adds. “One boy wanted to play, an argument broke out, and one of the children slapped him. The boy who was slapped called his father, who went to the other family’s compound with his brothers and with a weapon and murdered the grandfather, the father, and a nephew. In the end, they were driven out of the city. In a well-ordered society, a spat between children ends with a parent of one of them going to the other family’s home, sitting down to talk, and then the kids apologize. In the Arab community, it can end with gunshots.”

Munir: “When I was a kid, there was one case when an entire family was almost wiped out because of a soccer match between children. One boy wanted to play, an argument broke out, and one of the children slapped him. The boy who was slapped called his father, who went to the other family’s compound with his brothers and with a weapon and murdered the grandfather, the father, and a nephew"

“A bloody feud between families doesn’t care whether you’re a criminal or not. It only cares if you’re a member of the wrong family,” says retired police Assistant Commissioner Yifrah Duchovny, the former commander of the Shfela District and the station chief in nearby Ramle. According to Duchovny, one tool that has proved effective in halting the cycle of bloody revenge is a reconciliation committee, which tries to mediate between the sides.

“The one thing that has had more of an effect than any kind of police activity,” Duchovny says, “is the informal system of conciliation. Police have to take these homicides as seriously as possible and with all due gravity, and they have to use all the means at their disposal – and they do have means. But, at the same time, they have to adopt a policy of dialogue and conciliation. Police commanders or their Arab affairs advisers who know how to conduct these things can bring about a break [in violence] that last for months, years – or even forever.”

In Ramle and Lod, one such committee is in operation, headed by Hajj Karim Jarushi, who has helped police calm conflicts on several occasions. In 2018, for example, he spearheaded negotiations that ended with the safe return of 7-year-old Karim Jumhour, who was kidnapped from his home in Qalansawe and taken to Ramallah.

One person familiar with these committees’ workings explains, “it is the feuding parties who approach the committee. It could be between two families, a couple, or neighbors. The committee tries to hear both sides, mediate between them, and heal the rift. To begin with, they declare a hudna, a three-day truce. Because, in the first few days after a feud breaks out, people can be hotheaded, and you shouldn’t judge them.”

During the three days of the hudna, the committee tries to get to the bottom of the conflict. Members could hold separate conversations with the parties and consult with various professionals, like surveyors and engineers, if the case revolves around a construction complaint or experts in family law if the feud is about inheritance. Unlike the court system, where the default is to determine which side is right and which is wrong, the reconciliation committees prefer to find a compromise that both sides can live with.

“They try to broker a hudna to calm everything down so that it doesn't spiral into a blood feud,” says the same source. He adds that when people have been murdered, and one side has more fatalities than the other, a law in Islam permits one side to pay the other side money to ‘balance the books’ rather than paying in blood. In the real world, however, things are never quite that simple, and the moment a life is taken, it will be very hard to stop the violence. “Once it has crossed that red line, there will be victim after victim, and it’s almost impossible to stop the bloodshed. Only in very rare cases have people genuinely forgiven and moved on.”

Both the source familiar with the reconciliation committees and the former police commander agree on one thing: the power of reconciliation committees has waned over the years since the younger generation is not eager to adopt the traditional conflict-solving methods. “This generation has moved away from tradition and adopted only what is comfortable for it,” says Duchovny. “And it’s easier to adopt the custom of blood feuds, of pulling the trigger, than to sit down and understand everything that reconciliation demands.”

“A bloody feud between families doesn’t care whether you’re a criminal or not. It only cares if you’re a member of the wrong family,” says retired police Assistant Commissioner Yifrah Duchovny. According to Duchovny, one tool that has proved effective in halting the cycle of bloody revenge is a reconciliation committee, which tries to mediate between the sides

Femicide? The ‘Cheap’ Way to End a Feud

Mawaja is not the only reason for murders in Lod. Sixteen of the victims over the past decade have been women, killed in what, for the most part, have been incidents of violence within the family. Five of the victims – including Lidar Swissa Yaffe and Sigal Atias, both of whom were murdered last month – were Jewish. All of these cases have been solved, and the key suspects and/or defendants in each have been arrested. In contrast, just two of the remaining nine cases of femicide – of Arab women – were solved.

There is one key reason for this: In Arab society, a murder within the family is often committed by a hired assassin from outside the community, while the person ordering the murder – the husband, for example – ensures that he has a solid alibi placing him far from the scene of the crime. The two cases that were solved were that of 19-year-old Najla al-Amouri, who was killed by one of her brothers, and Aziza al-Turi, killed by her mentally ill son. Najla’s brother, Mohammed al-Amouri, admitted to strangling her because he was upset at her chosen lifestyle. He was sentenced to 30 years behind bars. Meanwhile, criminal proceedings against Al-Turi’s son were halted, and he was sent to a secure psychological hospital.

In addition to al-Amouri, four other Arab women are believed to have been murdered by a member of their family or the family they married into: Duaa Abu Shrakh, Diana Abu Katifan, Siham Azbarga, and Rabab Abu Siam. None of these cases has been solved. Another similar murder was that of Mirwat Daoki, who was eating lunch with her husband when a masked man broke in and shot her to death before fleeing.

“Rabab’s murder is taken for granted,” says Amina Abu Siam. “The police also know who did it. My struggle is for justice for my daughter. I am begging the police to catch him, to do some work. So that my daughter’s blood wasn’t spilled in vain. I’m not looking for whomever it was that came into my yard. I want the person who paid him"

Rabab Abu Siam was married for around ten years. According to her mother, Amina, one Friday during the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns, she returned to the family home in Lod and was surprised to find Rabab there. “She told me that she came because she had been subjected to mental and physical abuse for more than two years,” the mother claims.

Rabab remained in her parents’ home and started divorce proceedings against her husband. She told authorities that he had been threatening her. In October 2021, he was arrested for threatening behavior and attempting to hurt her but was released two days later without charge. A few months before her murder, Rabab survived an attempt to kill her. She was sitting in her car when shots were fired at her, but she escaped unharmed.

In a recording obtained by Shomrim, a female police officer can be heard talking to Rabab after the first attempt on her life, trying to persuade her to move into a shelter where she would be safe. “We recognize that there is a real danger to your life,” the officer says. “In what way? Are you being followed, okay? Does that seem normal to you? This isn’t the first shooting incident. This time, the shots were aimed right at the car you were in. More than that? Rabab, I can’t mince my words here.”

Rabab, however, refused to move into a shelter. “When you can see death up close, isn’t that being in real danger?” the officer continues to try to persuade her. “Really, what will you feel when you see death up close? That everything’s okay? No.” Rabab, who sounds shocked, replies: “I felt that nothing in this life is worth anything. Never mind, forget it. Maybe I’m just not feeling myself these days.”

Around a week before the murder, Rabab’s mother says, she agreed to drop all her financial demands as part of the divorce agreement. Her husband asked for a few days to think about it. On the weekend, Rabab drove to the apartment her family had rented for her in Be’er Sheva. As soon as she arrived in the city, police officers took her to the local station and again tried to persuade her to go to a shelter where she would be safe from harm.

“At the moment, the safest place for you in the country is here in Be’er Sheva,” one of the officers told her. “If you leave Be’er Sheva and go to Lod, you must understand that your life will be in danger, real danger. You know better than me who is looking for you, so there’s nothing I can say to you… At the moment, Lod is the most dangerous place for you. The moment you leave this city, you must understand that anything that happens to you is your responsibility… There’s a good reason that we asked you to come here. Yes, we received some intelligence, there’s been a change, and they’re looking for you. And you know who it is. And it seems that he is making efforts to locate you.”

This time, too, Rabab refused to go to a shelter, presumably so she could continue living with her daughters. A few days later, she returned to Lod to be with them. On the evening of July 26, 2022, Rabab was sitting in the enclosed yard of her parent’s home. One of her small daughters was on her lap. A masked man wearing all black burst into the yard, fired several shots, and fled. Rabab’s mother, Amina, saw everything. She even tried to block the gunman’s exit with her body, but he pushed her aside and fled.

Rabab’s husband was out of the country at the time of the murder, so there is no doubt that he did not pull the trigger. He was detained and questioned on his return to Israel on suspicion of having ordered the murder -  but was released soon after. He was never indicted, so he can now take his case to the state-sanctioned Sharia Courts and argue that he should be given custody of their children rather than Rabab’s parents. In October, shots were fired at the home of Rabab’s grandfather, and the family is convinced that the attack was an effort to intimidate them in the ongoing legal custody battle.

Rabab’s mother is furious with the police, which, despite having precise intelligence, did not manage to prevent her daughter’s murder and which has still not apprehended her killed. “Rabab’s murder is taken for granted,” says Amina Abu Siam. “The police also know who did it. My struggle is for justice for my daughter. I am begging the police to catch him, to do some work. So that my daughter’s blood wasn’t spilled in vain. I’m not looking for whomever it was that came into my yard. I want the person who paid him.”

Sereen Abulaban, the lawyer representing Rabab’s ex-husband, said that the case against her client on suspicion of murdering his ex-wife had been closed but declined to present Shomrim with a copy of a notice to that effect from the police. “He is the father, and it is his right to see his daughters, and he is their natural legal guardian,” said Abulaban. “Beyond that, my client is innocent, and, as proof of that, the case against him was closed, and no indictment was filed against him. Moreover, at custody hearings, the police produced a review which said that he did not pose any threat to his daughters.”

Social worker Samah Salaime says that most of the women were murdered because that is the “cheapest” way to end a feud. “An ugly divorce,” she explains, “coupled with a plentiful and inexpensive supply of crime organizations which can resolve the whole issue for 30,000 or 50,000 shekels [$8,500 or $14,000], that’s a ‘good deal’ for the man"

Six years before Abu Siam’s murder, her friend, Duaa Abu Shrakh, was also murdered. There is a chilling similarity between the two cases. “Duaa and Rabab were both murdered in the same pattern. They both escaped with their lives the first time, so they thought they could survive the second time,” says a woman who was a close friend of Duaa who asked to remain anonymous.

Duaa also complained many times about threats and abuse from her husband. According to her friend, she decided to get a divorce after he tried to kidnap her. “He kept on threatening that he would take her to Ben Shemen Forest and kill her there, and no one would ever find her,” she says. “That day, he came to take her from her family’s home. As soon as she saw that he was heading toward the exit from Lod, she opened the car door and tried to jump out. She yelled and, in the end, somewhere along Death Road [Hahalutz Street in Lod, the scene of many murders – D.D.], he stopped, and some passersby heard a woman screaming and helped her get away from him. After that, she moved into her parents’ home.”

Some two years after that incident, Duaa was shot to death by a masked gunman. It happened after she had spent the day with her children and was about to return them to their father. Her parents still cannot take it in. In the aftermath of the murder, a special discussion was held in 2016 at the Knesset’s Committee on the Status of Women, and Gender Equality. Several members of the Abu Shrakh attended.

“Three months ago, the police came and knocked on the door at three o’clock in the morning,” Duaa’s sister Samah said in the Knesset. “My mother, father, and Duaa were at home. They said they had received information that Duaa was in danger and that she was a murder target, and even told her the name of the would-be murderer. And she refused to leave. They wanted to take her to a shelter. She refused because she said it didn’t make any sense. I have to go to a shelter, she said, while the man threatening me lives the good life. But I didn’t see the logic in what she was saying. The shelter is for the person being threatened, not the person making threats. And they have all the evidence, all of it. I don’t know, maybe they were waiting for her to bring him with the gun to them?”

Shukri Abu Tabik, the attorney representing Duaa’s ex-husband, said in response: “My client was interviewed about the events, denied any connection to them – and was released. He was not indicted and, in any case, has not been convicted of any crime.”

Social worker Samah Salaime has known almost all of the women killed in Lod in recent years and dozens more who are currently under threat. She says that most of the women were murdered because that is the “cheapest” way to end a feud which could be a financial dispute, a custody battle, or even a war over inheritance. “An ugly divorce,” she explains, “coupled with a plentiful and inexpensive supply of crime organizations which can resolve the whole issue for 30,000 or 50,000 shekels [$8,500 or $14,000], that’s a ‘good deal’ for the man.”

Another reason that Salaime cites is the police’s poor rate of solving the murder of Arab women, which leads to a lack of deterrence. “I am in no doubt, and there are studied to back this up, that when a criminal knows for certain that he will be caught, he doesn’t commit the crime,” says Salaime, who is director of the Na’am, an acronym in Arabic for Arab Women in the Center, an NGO promoting women’s issues in Lod. “If he knows that there’s a 50 percent chance of being caught, he might think about it, and maybe he’ll take the risk. But if he knows that there’s only a 20 percent chance of being apprehended, he’ll feel emboldened and will go ahead and commit the crime. Because he knows the chances of him being hunted for the rest of his life are zero.”

“I am in no doubt, and there are studied to back this up, that when a criminal knows for certain that he will be caught, he doesn’t commit the crime,” says Salaime. “He knows that there’s only a 20 percent chance of being apprehended, he’ll feel emboldened and will go ahead and commit the crime. Because he knows the chances of him being hunted for the rest of his life are zero"

Nothing has Changed Since Operation Guardian of the Walls

Violence within the family, feuds between clans, mawaja, debts, conflicts between crime organizations, and sometimes a deadly mixture of one or more of these elements mean that it’s sometimes hard to remember who has been killed and for what reason. “The new generation does not have any hope and does see any future,” says Adal (not his real name), a Lod resident. “A lad who wants to get married has nowhere to get money. He doesn’t have an income. Another thing is the home: We look around us at Ganei Aviv and Ganei Ya’ar [two predominantly Jewish neighborhoods] and see they’re building everywhere. They build homes for the Garinim Torani’im [groups of families from the religious-Zionist community] who come from the outside, but not for people born here. The young people look for places to live and to get married. There’s nowhere. So, they go in the direction of drugs and the gray market. And then the snowball starts.”

Adal’s comments may sound like another case of urban gentrification, where wealthier residents push out the longstanding local community. However, in Lod, the situation is made even more charged by nationalistic and ideological elements. While members of the Garinim Torani’im see themselves as engaged in a purely Zionist activity that brings great benefit to the city, many of the Arab residents feel as if they are being driven from their homes – with the blessing of the Israeli establishment.

These feelings also fueled the violence in Lod during Operation Guardians of the Wall in 2021, when two people were killed: Yigal Yehoshua, who was killed by an Arab mob, members of which are currently on trial for his murder, and Moussa Hasuna, who was shot dead by a Jewish resident. The state prosecution closed the case against the Jewish residents suspected of killing Hasuna, accepting their claim that they were acting in self-defense.

None of this, of course, is new. “I was born in the 1970s, and I have lived in Lod my entire life,” says Mustafa, a local resident, who also asked to use a pseudonym.  “I lived in the Harakevet district in the south of the city, known at the time as a hotbed of drugs, murder, and criminal activity. I was just 17 years old when I held a dead man, a murder victim, in my arms for the first time. He was an honest man who would never even raise his voice at anyone. My childhood friends have been murdered; my family members have been hurt. It threatens us all. In the meantime, however, it doesn’t threaten any Jews, so the rest of the country is silent.”

“There are refugee camps in Lod,” he adds. “Camps in which there are tin shacks, open sewers, shots fired – and no infrastructure, no enforcement, no education, and no law. There are children in Lod whose fathers do not know how to read or write. Sometimes, the father is a former collaborator, and sometimes he’s from a family involved in a feud. There’s no horizon for work or education. People don’t have a strong family support system to help them.

“Just compare where young Arab kids in Lod spend their afternoons and where Jewish ones spend theirs. It’s a different world. Jewish youths spend their time at community centers, extracurricular activities, and youth movements. There are several youth centers in every neighborhood. Just compare how many basketball courts and soccer pitches there are. That’s where the problem starts. When I want to educate my child, I take him out of Lod. I send him to extracurricular activities in Ramle, in Ganei Aviv. I don’t want him to go to a community center in an Arab neighborhood because there’s nothing there. So, when young people don’t have anywhere to hang out, they go to places they shouldn’t be.”

“If I were to inundate the best neighborhood in Tel Aviv with drugs,” says Salaime, “there would be drug dealers there and drug addicts. Any youth with a gun can make money with it – and that’s all he needs.”

Political activist Munir agrees. “The massive influx of firearms has reached absurd proportions. One day, I was standing in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of the city, and I saw a child with a gun under his shirt. It looked like it was so heavy that he would topple over. The grocery store owner saw me looking and whispered, ‘He worked with watermelons during the summer, made a few thousand shekels, and bought himself a gun.’ He was in ninth grade. A kid like that, if you get him angry or provoke him, he’ll shoot you. Why? Because he has a gun.”

Police say that the Arab population tends not to cooperate with criminal investigations and does not usually report illegal firearms. “Why? When you live in Tel Aviv or Modi’in, do they ask for your cooperation? Do they make demands of you?” says Mustafa. “They’re trying to pin the responsibility on the poor resident, who just wants to live, to get up in the morning and work. What will they get from the police? Will they keep them safe? I know for sure that if your dog were to be hit by a stray bullet, the police would catch whoever fired the gun. But it's less important if someone, God forbid, kills Ahmed or Mohammed.”

These feelings also fueled the violence in Lod during Operation Guardians of the Wall in 2021, when two people were killed: Yigal Yehoshua, who was killed by an Arab mob, members of which are currently on trial for his murder, and Moussa Hasuna, who was shot dead by a Jewish resident. The state prosecution closed the case against the Jewish residents suspected of killing Hasuna, accepting their claim that they were acting in self-defense

Rather surprisingly, former police officer Duchovny agrees with some of these sentiments. “Cooperation between intelligence officers and the Arab community is much more difficult than it is with the Jewish population, and that’s the main reason [for the low rate of solved murders]. Most see the police as the representatives of evil, not as people looking for the truth and justice; the rest don’t speak to the police because they’re afraid. Even if you were an eyewitness to a murder and you know the person who pulled the trigger, you wouldn’t dare tell anyone what you saw. It’s fear, it’s not just a reticence to cooperate. One thing leads to another.”

In the end, Duchovny believes, the solution is, on the one hand, to invest a lot more in the direct war on the centers of crime in the Arab community and, “at the same time, to invest a whole lot more in the community. When I was appointed head of the Ramle police station, the Jawarish neighborhood was in flames. We tried to come up with a solution. Most of the recommendations focused on setting up a task force with officers from the Border Police and the Special Patrol Unit to work there, and I said that I wanted to open a community policing center.

“They looked at me as if I were mad, but we deployed two very talented officers there, one Jewish and one Arab, and they started to talk to the community and hold school activities. The local authority also started to pave roads, they put trash cans in public places – and that had an impact. After not very long, we saw instructions from bailiffs – which used to entail seven or eight officers, with backing from the Border Police – we could now do over the phone. So, the work must be on several fronts. On the one hand, an iron fist; on the other, a hand that provides services.”

After the most recent spate of murders, Lod Mayor Yair Revivo, accompanied by hundreds of city residents and municipal employees, went to Jerusalem to protest against the situation and to demand action. Revivo, who is identified with the political right, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who promised: “to promote the mayor’s plan to bolster governance in the city and restore personal security.” In a photograph circulated after the meeting, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, former deputy minister Avi Maoz, MK Aryeh Dery, and others could be seen. Many Lod residents believe that was nothing more than a cynical ploy by their mayor since noticeably absent from that photograph was any representative of the city’s Arab population.

Revivo: “Everyone has the right to express diverse views, but not through violence, rather through a commitment to creating a quality society that believes in dialogue and mutual respect. We live in close proximity to one another, we work together, study together and share this city. Everyone needs to think about our children and future, believe in good, and, in common, reject violence in all its forms”

Revivo, for his part, is delighted with the establishment of new educational and cultural institutions in the city and its general development – including legislating construction in Arab neighborhoods, where illegal building is commonplace. “These are historic processes that the Arab population of Lod has been lacking ever since the establishment of the State of Israel. These processes will ensure that the Arab community in Lod will be better educated and enjoy a better quality of life, without crime, drugs, gunshots, and arson,” says the mayor.

“I want to send an important message to the people of Lod,” Revivo adds. “Lod is a diverse city in which everyone has to learn to live in the same place, in brotherhood and good neighborly relations, while respecting values like honor, tolerance, sensitivity to other people, dialogue, and safeguarding human rights. Everyone cares about the people, city, religion, and community they were born into. Everyone has the right to express diverse views, but not through violence, rather through a commitment to creating a quality society that believes in dialogue and mutual respect. We live in close proximity to one another, we work together, study together and share this city. Everyone needs to think about our children and future, believe in good, and, in common, reject violence in all its forms. Every Lod resident is entitled to a quality of life, to live in peace and quiet. Lod is home to us all.”