The Israel Nature and Parks Authority’s chief scientist warned this week that a surge in the feral dog population in the northern West Bank is bringing rabies into Israel, and that greater numbers will enter big cities unless coordinated action is taken now.

“In the past, we worried about rabid foxes, then jackals, but last year and this year, the main concern is over [rabid] feral dogs,” Prof. Dror Hawlena told The Times of Israel this week.

Rabid jackals and dogs have grabbed the headlines this month.

In one particularly horrific incident, jackals entered the tents of campers by the Sea of Galilee and bit a girl in the face. A rabid female jackal was subsequently caught and destroyed.

In another incident, a puppy adopted in the Jerusalem suburb of Pisgat Ze’ev, near the West Bank, was found to be rabid after it had been walked in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and traveled on public transport, endangering dozens of people and other dogs.

While rabies is deadly for animals and humans, humans can be vaccinated immediately after a bite to prevent the disease from developing.

The only human to die of rabies in Israel in recent years was a 77-year-old shepherd from northern Israel, who was bitten by his own unvaccinated dog in 2024 and sought medical attention too late.

Northern Israel has long been a rabies flashpoint, given its proximity to Lebanon and Jordan, where unvaccinated stray dogs are common. In northern Israel, the number of jackals and feral dogs has increased thanks to piles of waste left by IDF soldiers, as they have battled the Hezbollah terror organization for nearly three years.

Southern Israel, particularly near centers of Bedouin concentration, where sanitation is poor, has also seen rising cases of feral dogs, although not, so far, of rabies. Since the deadly Hamas invasion on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, more stray dogs have been able to enter Israel from the enclave.

But it is what’s happening in the West Bank that keeps Hawlena awake at night. “The main thing that frightens us is Samaria,” he said, using the Israeli term for the northern West Bank, “where there’s a crazy increase” in feral dogs.

“Our great fear was that it would move over the Green Line into Israel, and we are at the start of such an event,” he went on. “We’ve warned about this. There’s a fear it will come into the big urban centers of Israel.”

According to Agriculture Ministry figures, there........

© The Times of Israel