Police battle Bedouin mafias in Negev with undercover operation

“I was constantly afraid they might harm me,” says undercover agent of experience during 18-month-long investigation against Bedouin crime family.

By World Israel News Staff

Bedouin organized crime families are facing a crackdown by Israeli police as the authorities work to bust so-called “protection” rackets and rampant intimidation in the Negev’s construction industry.

For years, residents of Israel’s south have complained about deteriorating law and order in the region, including widespread extortion that sees business owners forced to pay monthly “fees” to Bedouin mafias or risk seeing their businesses vandalized or destroyed.

Even local government tenders have been affected by organized crime, with mafias controlling the allocation of lucrative state contracts to specific construction companies.

Speaking to Hebrew-language Ynet, two police officers recently involved in an advanced undercover operation revealed how the authorities are utilizing new strategies to combat the phenomenon in construction projects.

The investigation began after numerous contractors who were awarded tenders to build a new neighborhood in the Bedouin town of Segev Shalom were intimidated by a local crime family.

Claiming ownership rights over the land on which the neighborhood is slated to be built, the mafia has threatened contractors, burned their construction equipment, and scared workers away from the site, making the project’s advancement impossible.

At the construction site, police planted undercover agents who posed as security guards and laborers.

The agents were repeatedly threatened directly by members of the mafia, who told them to abandon the project or risk consequences targeting their families.

One of the agents involved, who was identified  as A, told Ynet that the mafia leverage creative methods to determine the identities of those working at the site.

A said that seemingly innocent children were sent to ask workers their names and communities of origin. That information would be reported back to mafia leadership, which would then dispatch so-called “soldiers” to threaten the families of those involved in the project.

“Throughout the work [at the construction site], my heart raced,” another undercover agent, identified as H, said.

“I was constantly afraid they might harm me,” he told Ynet, adding that as he “drove around the area to check on the progress [of the building], there was always an ATV nearby with a masked man riding back and forth, reporting on our movements.”

After an investigation lasting nearly 18 months, the police gathered enough evidence of threats and intimidation for a criminal indictment against two local crime families.

In a statement to Ynet, the families’ defense attorneys, Esther Bar Zion and Victor Uzan, claimed that their clients were innocent.

“These accusations are baseless and intended to intimidate the… families, as well as the broader Bedouin community,” said Bar Zion and Uzan.

The attorneys claimed that the claims of intimidation were falsified in order to advance the project, which they said has been delayed by a court order.

Arab crimeBedouinCrimeNegevsouthern communitiesSouthern Israel