Weighing up his options on a Monday morning in January, Ali Zbeedat, a longtime shopkeeper from Sakhnin, a small Palestinian-majority town in Israel’s north, decided he had had enough.Earlier that day, the widespread and organised criminality that plagues Sakhnin and countless other Palestinian towns and villages across Israel had come to his door.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list“We know where you go and where you walk. We will kill you if you don’t finish what you’re supposed to,” a message sent to his phone read. Gunmen had already targeted Zbeedat’s family businesses on four separate occasions, the latest just the week before, when one of his stores had been hit by dozens of automatic rifle rounds.The message was the final straw. Zbeedat shuttered his businesses, with no plan to reopen them.His case has caught the attention of Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as wider Israeli society.As word of Zbeedat’s action spread, more and more businesses in Sakhnin closed their doors, protesting against the organised crime that had become endemic to their community amid what appeared to be a deliberate policy of government neglect.What began as protests in Sakhnin quickly galvanised public opinion against criminal gangs to levels described by commentators as “historic”, with tens of thousands of people, both Palestinian and Jewish Israeli, taking to the streets of Tel Aviv and choking traffic in …
