More than 1,500 people participated on Monday, January 5, in the funeral of Mohammed Hussein Tarabin Al-Sana, who was killed on Saturday night by a policeman who had come to arrest him as part of a police operation in the village of Tarabin al-Sana in the Negev.

Family members and friends attend the funeral of Muhammad Hussein Tarabin, who was shot and killed by a police officer in the village of Tarabin in the Negev, January 5, 2026. (Photo: Jamal Awad/Flash90)

Hadash MK Ayman Odeh says that he appealed to police chief Daniel Levy today to demand the immediate release of body-camera footage from police officers involved in the killing of 36-year-old Tarabin. “I have just returned from the funeral of Mohammad Hussein Tarabin, whom a police officer killed the day before yesterday, as part of the so-called ‘governance’ approach of the fascist minister Itamar Ben Gvir,” he said during a Hadash-Ta’al faction meeting in the Knesset, blaming the racist National Security Minister.

“Hadash-Ta’al submitted a request to the police commissioner to immediately expose the body-camera footage worn by the officer who killed Tarabin. We all want to know the truth, even though it is so clear,” he continues. In the letter addressed to Levy, Odeh says he wrote that “substantial discrepancies between the police version of events and residents’ testimonies require full and immediate transparency. In the serious incident involving the lethal use of force, which ended in the loss of human life.”

According to the police report, Odeh says, Tarabin was killed during an attempted arrest after allegedly running toward police officers while holding a suspicious object. However, the letter states that village residents reject this report, saying that Tarabin didn’t pose a threat and that the shooting took place immediately as the forces entered his house.”

“We, the Arab population, have nobody to turn to in this country — not the minister, not the prime minister, and not the attorney general, who is a great democratic figure in regards to the judicial overhaul but does nothing when it comes to the Arab population,” Odeh says, adding that the only power the Arab community has is to turn out in force at the next election and “throw all of the racists out of government.”

The Al-Kasum Regional Council has petitioned the Supreme Court against Ben Gvir and the police, demanding the removal of concrete blocks placed around the village of Tarabin, an end to the minister’s “show visits” and a halt to oppressive policing actions that restrict freedom of movement in the community. The petition claims that ‘the police are carrying out oppressive actions in Tarabin, including “placing concrete blocks at the entrance and exit to the community, individual checks for those entering and leaving and more.” It also claims that “everything is being done as collective punishment – against the backdrop of Minister Ben Gvir’s public relations campaign.”

On Monday, Arab Bedouin leaders have called a protest in front the Prime Minister office in Jerusalem, next Sunday against the police’s crackdown in the Negev, which has been going on for a month, in which officers have infuriated residents by placing ad hoc checkpoints at the entrances to several towns.

Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=33166