Ben Gvir is Failing – and the Negev Is Paying the Price
“In the Negev, the future of the people of Israel will be tested,” Ben-Gurion once said – and he knew exactly why. In recent years, public awareness has finally begun to awaken to the political abandonment of the Negev: neglect bordering on national disgrace, which in part contributed to the conditions that led to the October 7 disaster, and in another part is still destined to shape Israel’s strategic direction – in almost every possible sense.
For years, the Negev has been Israel’s neglected backyard: a de facto ex-territory, encompassing about 60% of the country’s land but home to less than 14% of its population. The systematic disregard shown by successive Israeli governments created a neglected region, one most Israelis know mainly from their military service or from the drive to Eilat. Into the vacuum left by the government stepped Bedouin criminal elements, who built infrastructures of protection rackets, illegal construction, drug farms – and at times, fertile ground for terrorism.
This week, crime data for the first three quarters of 2025 were published, following a prolonged delay during which the police – with the backing of the Minister of National Security – avoided releasing the data to the public. Only after a request by the Freedom of Information Movement was the information finally disclosed. The data themselves? Speak for themselves.
But before examining them, it is important to pause on the context: an election year. And like every election year, this one is characterized by cheap populism, shallow demagoguery, and TikTok videos. Just this morning (29.12), Minister Ben Gvir tweeted that “the fight for governance in the Negev hasn’t been done like this for fifty years,” adding as proof 5,000 demolitions of illegal structures, a 19% drop in car theft, and an 80% increase in noise citations issued to mosques.
The problem, as in many other cases, is that the story the minister tells is only part of the story. The data are selected with tweezers, the context disappears, and the wording is dictated in advance. If you will – the voice is Itamar’s, but the hands are the police’s.
Because when the minister uses phrases like “a drop of X percent” or “an increase of Y percent,” the obvious question arises: compared to what? To 2024? But the full crime data for 2024 have not been published to this day. Every year, the police publish a detailed statistical yearbook, usually between May and August, including dozens of pages of data and analysis. Under the current government, this practice has been abandoned: the 2022 yearbook was published with an exceptional delay, the 2023 yearbook only at the beginning of 2025, and full official data for 2024 – simply do not exist.
Even the timeline itself remains vague. Do the figures presented by the minister refer to December 2025? November? Or perhaps to 2024? After all, already in November Ben Gvir claimed that “we demolished over 5,000 illegal structures,” while in 2024 it was published that a similar number of structures had already been demolished in the Negev by then. So is this an updated figure, a recycling of old data, or a self-quotation that each time receives a different time frame – thirty years, fifty years – depending on the needs of the moment?
Everything, it seems, remains deliberately unclear.
What is absolutely clear is that something is not working. Despite the declarations, despite “Operation New Order” initiated by the minister (its name borrowed from the operation to eliminate Nasrallah in Beirut), and despite localized operations such as the one carried out this week in Tarabin – the Negev remains de facto abandoned. Residents report stone-throwing on major roads, gunfire toward residential homes, and fleets of drones crossing in from the Egyptian border every night. This week, parents were forced to send their children to school earlier via routes that bypass stone-throwing hotspots, while the minister – who uploads carefully edited “governance tour” videos – shows up once in a while to demonstrate presence and responds mainly through social media.
And now, when we look at the crime data that were published, the picture becomes clearer. And precision matters: the crime data released this week are nationwide – but they provide the broader context within which the reality in the Negev also unfolds. According to the data, the past year saw a 45% increase in sexual offenses in Israel, and a new record in the number of criminal murders, with 46 women murdered (compared to 35 the previous year), and 252 murder victims from the Arab sector (compared to 116 in 2022). In addition, according to a report by Kan 11, during Ben Gvir’s three years as Minister of National Security, 730 people were murdered in criminal incidents – an increase of about 70% compared to the three years preceding his tenure.
When such trends exist at the national level, it is hardly surprising that they manifest even more sharply in the most neglected periphery of the state – first and foremost, the Negev.
A government that measures success through TikTok videos and context-dependent percentages, while avoiding the publication of full and transparent data, is not governing – it is storytelling. And in the Negev, a story is no longer enough.
The residents of the Negev, as well as those in the North, are not asking for miracles. They are asking for something simple: a present, transparent, and accountable state. One that does not hide behind partial graphs, and does not measure governance through effects. Until that happens – the abandonment will continue, and the price, as always, will be paid in the blood of citizens.
