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On December 16, Nimr Suleiman was sitting in a house in al-Reineh with several friends when a group of armed men burst in and opened fire.
Suleiman was hit by a spray of bullets and died on the spot. While his death is still being investigated, it is believed that the intruders had intended to gun down one of his companions.
The killing marked a tragic new record for bloodshed among Israel’s Arab citizens: 90 homicides since the start of 2020. By December 28, the toll had hit 96, representing a harrowing 50 percent jump in the murder rate among Arab Israelis in only four years.
Palestinian activists destroy part of the separation wall in the West Bank village of Bir Nabala, near Ramallah, Nov. 15, 2013. (Activestills)
The world is a very different place from when +972 Magazine began as a blog in 2010. Benjamin Netanyahu’s now record-breaking stint in power was barely a year old; there was no coronavirus pandemic or reality TV star-turned-autocrat in the White House; and social media was not the fake news factory it has become today.
Yet for all that is unrecognizable about the world now, there are also many things that are all too familiar, not least in Israel-Palestine: the ongoing theft and settling of Palestinian land; a military occupation that has lasted over half a century; a choking siege on Gaza; racism against African asylum seekers and Ethiopian Israelis; and an abiding refusal by the Israeli state and large segments of its society to face head-on the legacy of the country’s founding, to name but a few.