KAFR KANNA — As they do every week in this northern Arab town, Majed and Rana were closing up their restaurant early on Sunday in honor of the Christian day of rest.

While Majed wiped down the outdoor tables, his wife mopped the small shop’s floors. The sun was shining and the middle-aged pair, who requested that pseudonyms be used in place of their real names, had left the doors ajar to let in the occasional breeze.

Suddenly, the sound of automatic gunfire pierced the air. A flock of pigeons seated on a telephone wire scattered into the sky. Though frazzled, Majed continued cleaning outside.

Moments later, shots rang out again, this time from a building adjacent to the restaurant, just meters away. Majed jolted upright and rushed into the restaurant taking cover near the cashier counter with Rana and this reporter.

Eventually, the gunfire died down and Majed, struggling to maintain his good spirits, cautiously returned to cleaning the tables outside.

Twenty minutes later, around a dozen police trucks rolled down the town’s main thoroughfare nearby.

Staccatos of gunfire had been intermittently ringing out in Kafr Kanna all morning — just a small taste of the previous night, when masked gunmen from two warring families, Awawdeh and Taha, took to the streets of the Galilee town with assault rifles, shooting at storefronts and attacking property for hours.

The town might as well have been a battlefield that evening. With police nowhere to be found, armed criminals roved freely and without fear. Residents who had been out for Ramadan were forced to flee for their lives, hiding in mosques and churches or finding refuge with neighbors.

Violent crime has been on the rise in Arab towns for years, with many fearing for their lives amid the homicides, shootings and bombings that now plague the community with alarming regularity, but the prevailing lawlessness appeared to reach new levels Saturday night in Kafr Kanna.

Though this unprecedented outbreak of violent chaos was largely unrelated to the underworld activity fueling the larger crime wave of the past few years, many saw it as yet another consequence of what they say is endemic police neglect. Residents are left to fend for themselves and negotiate “truces” between families as if they’re diplomats trying to stave off war between countries, and local leaders are largely powerless to halt the flood of illegal arms entering their communities.

Nasser Odat, who witnessed the violence Saturday night, said the shooting had begun at 5:30 p.m. just after sunset, as the muezzin completed the maghrib prayer, signaling the end of the day’s fast.

“After he recited the final words, ceaseless gunfire started and just continued into the night, you could hear it in every direction, very close by, as if it were coming from within the house,” he told The Times of Israel.

In videos that circulated on social media, many posted by the assailants themselves, gangs of black-clad men were seen roaming the streets with army-grade weapons, opening fire on closed businesses. Some poured gasoline outside storefronts and on cars, setting them alight.

مسلح يطلق الرصاص على محل تجاري في بلدة كفر كنا، بالداخل المحتل عام 48 pic.twitter.com/7zAFvezoCl — شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) February 21, 2026

مسلح يطلق الرصاص على محل تجاري في بلدة كفر كنا، بالداخل المحتل عام 48 pic.twitter.com/7zAFvezoCl

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) February 21, 2026

Even those who remained at home were in the line of fire. A grenade dropped from a drone exploded on the roof of the Amara family’s home, injuring four people, including an elderly man and teenage girl.

Odat, who is studying film in Haifa, had returned for the holiday weekend to his family home, which is down the street from the Amara family.

“My niece, who came to break the fast with us — so we could give her presents and celebrate with her — she got up in a panic and started crying, throwing up. She’s 3 years old, she’s just a girl,” he said.

מצב חירום בכפר כנא בגליל ירי בכל מקום ורחפנים מתפוצצים בתוך הבתים ובת 18 פצועה קשה גם בת 40 . בן 80 פצוע בינוני עם פציעות חודרות . תוהו ובהו בכפר כנא . המצב יצא משליטה והתושבים בורחים מהבתים למסגדים… pic.twitter.com/7VuUDeFq9i — כל החדשות בזמן אמת (@Saher_News_24_7) February 21, 2026

מצב חירום בכפר כנא בגליל ירי בכל מקום ורחפנים מתפוצצים בתוך הבתים ובת 18 פצועה קשה גם בת 40 . בן 80 פצוע בינוני עם פציעות חודרות . תוהו ובהו בכפר כנא . המצב יצא משליטה והתושבים בורחים מהבתים למסגדים… pic.twitter.com/7VuUDeFq9i

— כל החדשות בזמן אמת (@Saher_News_24_7) February 21, 2026

Odat called police amid the gunfire. “I explain to her [the police dispatcher] what’s happening, that there’s no patrol cars, no police,” the young man recounted. But the police didn’t come.

“She tells me to call Magen David Adom,” an emergency medical service, he said. “I didn’t understand, no one needed a hospital, we were fine physically. It was insane to hear her say this while we were under fire at the same time.”

On Sunday, the town’s main road was a showcase of the scars suffered the night before, with bullet holes riddling glass storefronts and steel retail shutters.

Pedestrians who dared to leave the house cast wary glances as they made their way down the street. When asked about the damage to nearby stores, shop owners refused to even acknowledge it existed, apparently out of fear.

The gunbattles Saturday night appeared to be the culmination of days of tit-for-tat revenge attacks between the families, and even those earlier incidents had left uninvolved bystanders with wounds.

On Sunday evening, the two families ostensibly reached a sulha, or reconciliation, though it’s unclear how long the ceasefire will last.

A shaky truce had already been in place when the shooting started Saturday night, quickly collapsing under the hail of bullets. That night, as gunfire continued to rock Kafr Kanna, elders from both families rushed to the home of a well-respected sheikh on the town’s reconciliation committee, Kamal Khatib, to renegotiate the truce and rein in young men from either side, according to accounts in Arabic media confirmed by some of those present.

They reached another truce, but it was summarily violated the next morning when assailants burst into a restaurant near the village’s northern entrance and shot at one of the employees, injuring him in the torso.

“They were firing at him with the intention to kill,” said Muad Khatib, the injured man’s brother-in-law and son of Sheikh Kamal Khatib. “Before, gunmen had been shooting at the facades of the shops, not at individuals, but this time they entered the shop and they fired at him directly.”

According to Khatib, the injured man is a law-abiding citizen, not directly involved in the blood feud, but ambushed nevertheless for being a member of one of the warring families.

The sulha that was agreed upon Sunday evening, supposed to represent a genuine reconciliation between the two families rather than a temporary truce, was still standing as of Tuesday. But the only thing keeping the peace is the word of the families’ elders.

“In a normal country, we wouldn’t have to do this,” said Mansour Dahamsheh, another member of Kafr Kanna’s reconciliation committee and a former secretary-general of the Hadash political party. “This is the task of the police, but in the absence of the police and legal means, we are forced to deal with the violence.”

Speaking to The Times of Israel inside his home Sunday afternoon, Dahamsheh kept the window blinds closed, and declined to meet outside for an interview. “Where is the law, where are the police, where is the state?” he asked.

Clan disputes, which have existed for years, do not account for the sharp rise in violent crime that has taken place in Arab society.

Though the homicide rate has been rising for around two decades, spurred on by what Arab leaders and others say is government neglect of the issue, it increased twofold in 2023, coinciding with Itamar Ben Gvir’s first year as national security minister. It dipped slightly in 2024 before reaching new heights last year, which saw 252 crime-related deaths in the Arab sector.

As of Tuesday, violent crime in Arab society has claimed 56 lives this year, setting a pace that far exceeds last year’s record bloodletting.

Khatib said that the families in dispute are irrelevant. “The parties involved don’t really matter, what matters is that the police aren’t doing anything,” he insisted.

He called attention to firearms that have inundated Arab cities and towns in recent years, most of it thought tied to gangland activity.

“It starts with stupid, petty things but then it escalates, because they now have the weapons with which to go and fire at each other,” Khatib said.

“Years ago, those involved fought with sticks and knives; it was very unlikely someone would be killed,” he continued. But with the promulgation of military-grade firearms in Arab society, what once remained a trivial dispute can now turn deadly in an instant.

Residents who spoke to The Times of Israel illustrated the same pattern. While shooting is underway, law enforcement is absent. Once it stops, police from the nearest station, located on the outskirts of the city, enter the area to carry out searches and arrests.

“In real time, when people call the police asking them to stop the gunfire, enforce the law and restore order, they respond unequivocally: ‘We will not go in under fire; find shelter and don’t go out on the street; when the incident ends we will come,'” Dahamsheh paraphrased. “This is exactly what happened last night.”

Police did not respond directly to a request for comment regarding this claim, and instead referred The Times of Israel to their most recent statement on their operations in Kafr Kanna, in which they insisted that the “string of serious incidents that occurred Saturday night will receive an appropriate response from the Israel Police.”

As of Tuesday, according to police, officers had seized six handguns, a hunting rifle and a grenade, though none of the automatic weapons used brazenly Saturday night.

They have also arrested more than 40 people in the town, including 34 nabbed the night of the shooting. Police declined to give an exact number or disclose how many of those arrested remained in detention.

However, court documents from arraignments of suspects arrested Saturday night at the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court indicated that at least 14 of them were freed within two days.

Police did not accuse the suspects of violent crimes during the hearings, instead implicating them in the offense of conspiring to commit a crime.

What happened with the other 20 suspects remained unclear. Police did not respond to a request for comment about their status.

While police in official statements have blamed the court system for setting their suspects free and have urged “cooperation” on the part of courts, Dahamsheh accused law enforcement of failing to carry out basic police work, leaving judges’ hands tied.

“The police don’t bring the correct testimonies, they slack off, don’t collect evidence and the court system can’t do anything [with] this,” he said.

In at least two of the suspects’ cases, law enforcement did not check the men for gunshot residue, the police representative divulged in court Sunday. Two other injured suspects were brought hours late to the courtroom, leading the judge to free them subject to limitations: two-day restraining orders barring them from the town.

According to data from the Abraham Initiatives, only 32 indictments were filed last year against suspects in Arab killings. The group said the data is evidence of chronic under-policing when it comes to the community and “points to fundamental discrimination in enforcement.”

Odat, Dahamsheh and Khatib all insisted to The Times of Israel that this under-policing is intentional and systematic, meant to keep Arab citizens down and unable to organize politically due to living in constant mortal fear.

“There is a concerted effort by the government. They say that [the violence is] because of our culture, but I say it’s because of the governance of all these racist fanatics who blame us for the crime spreading like a cancer,” Odat said.

Nevertheless, law enforcement has vociferously denied accusations of neglect. In a statement addressing Kafr Kanna, police insisted the “dozens of detainees, seven weapons that were seized and forces’ operations prove our determination in dealing with criminal elements in the village,” saying that the “fight against crime in Arab society is a top priority for the Northern District.”

Ben Gvir, whose position gives him wide influence over policing priorities, hails from the Jewish nationalist far right and has long engaged in what his critics say is anti-Arab demagoguery.

Polling from the Israel Democracy Institute shows that under him, law enforcement has lost what little trust it had clawed back from the Arab community, which fell to record lows in 2021 and 2022, likely as a result of the crime wave. In 2019, 38 percent of Arabs expressed some trust in the police, a statistic that fell to 13% in 2021. By 2024, the figure was back to 27%, but in 2025 it fell back to 19%, reversing several years of gains.

The same poll found that 80% of Arab citizens fear that they or a family member will be hurt by violence.

Seeking to escape the violence, countless young Arab citizens now dream of emigrating. There are signs that young people studying abroad are doing everything they can to avoid returning home and many of those with means have already left.

“People no longer feel safe on the streets, women are worried for their children. When you lose a sense of security, of safety, people will emigrate. A lot of people already have migrated to other countries, because the police are not doing their job,” Khatib said.

Odat noted that his family also holds Jordanian citizenship. “Last night [during the shooting], my mother said: ‘That’s it, we’re immigrating to Jordan and not returning,'” he recounted. “We’re in a state of despair.”

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