Arab Israelis Living in Mixed Cities Say They Have Less Personal Security

Arab Israelis living in mixed cities are more likely to express concern for their personal security than those living in all-Arab cities, a new survey found. Of the Arab Israelis (called Palestinian citizens of Israel in the survey) asked in the mixed cities, 80.6% were worried or very worried by property offenses, as opposed to 63.7% of all Palestinian citizens of Israel; and 79.9% reported that they were worried about violence against women, in comparison to 65.8% in the national population of Arab Israelis. The survey by the Abraham Initiatives, the 2020 Personal Security Survey of Arab Society in Mixed Cities, was conducted in November-December 2020, prior to the conflict between Israel and Gaza in May 2021, which led to rioting, property damage, injury and death in several mixed cities in Israel. The survey is based on a sampling of six mixed cities (Haifa, Acre, Lod, Ramla, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and Ma’alot-Tarshiha), and included 304 Arab Israelis who were interviewed in person, in the Arabic language, in their homes.

Among the data revealed in the study: 60.8% of the Palestinian citizens of Israel in mixed cities felt a lack of personal security in the cities where they lived in 2020, as opposed to 27.5% of the Jewish citizens surveyed in mixed cities who felt that way; and the proportion of Arab residents of mixed cities who reported an absence of personal security (60.8%) was higher than the proportion of Arabs throughout the country (37.2%) and Jews throughout the country (10.6%) who reported an absence of personal security. The violent-crime-related phenomenon of greatest concern in the mixed cities in 2020 was shooting and use of firearms, which worried 83.8% of the Palestinian citizens of Israel in the mixed cities. In addition, 38.1% of the Palestinian citizens of Israel residing in mixed cities noted that the location where they experienced the greatest threat to their sense of personal security was in the city where they resided.