Three men in their 50s were shot dead Tuesday morning in the northern city of Shefa-Amr, while a 20-year-old medical student was killed overnight in the Negev, marking four deadly shooting incidents within hours.
Emergency services received reports of the Shefa-Amr shooting at 7:21 a.m. at Magen David Adom’s Carmel region dispatch center. Police said officers launched a search for suspects and that the motive was criminal.
MDA medic Bilal Khatib and paramedic Fadi Tantouri said they arrived at the scene to find three men lying unconscious, without a pulse or breathing, suffering from gunshot wounds.
“We conducted medical examinations and were forced to pronounce them dead at the scene,” they said.
During the night, Mahmoud Jasser Abu Arar, 20, a first-year medical student studying in Georgia, was shot and killed in the Bedouin town of Arara in the Negev. He had arrived in Israel just one day earlier for a visit.
According to police, the suspected motive was a blood feud linked to an ongoing family dispute in the Bedouin community. Large police forces were deployed to the scene, and 10 people were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the incident.
Abu Arar was taken to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, where his death was pronounced. Following a situation assessment, Negev region commander Cmdr. Shai Shlomo instructed investigators to exhaust all necessary investigative actions to build evidence and bring all those involved to justice.
Violence in Israel’s Arab community reached a record high in 2025, with 255 people killed over the course of the year. The start of 2026 has followed a similar pattern.
President Isaac Herzog issued an unusually strong statement on the issue after three people were killed within hours earlier this week.
“This is a chilling figure that shakes the heart and illustrates how violence has become a national plague,” Herzog said. “This reality is not a decree of fate. It is a critical national mission to strengthen enforcement, dismantle crime organizations and restore to citizens, in Arab society and Israeli society as a whole, the right to live in safety.”