Worldwide crime statistics for 2022 are tabulated, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The “State of Palestine," as UNODC calls it, reported that it had 33 homicides in 2022. That would make it one of the safest places on the planet.
At a rate of .62 homicides per 100,000 residents, the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) reported figure is similar to the murder rate in Austria, Switzerland, and Norway.
There’s only one problem. Newspaper articles published in 2022 detailed at least 50 homicides in Gaza and areas of Judea and Samaria controlled by the PA. Many of these articles appeared in official PA and Hamas-controlled publications.
So how did the PA arrive at such a desirable murder rate?
It turns out that if you deliberately refuse to count most of the murders that Palestinian Arabs commit each year, Palestinian Arabs statistically commit relatively few murders.
Specifically, the PA typically excludes five categories of homicide. They are:
-clan-on-clan murder;
-honor killings;
-extra-judicial murder by police or security forces (including prisoners in custody);
-murder of homosexuals;
-murder of Jewish civilians - of course
When you exclude these categories, Jenin truly is as safe as a Swiss alpine ski town.
Clan-on-clan murder is the first category of homicide that the PA omits from data. It is a taboo subject. According to the hype, the “State of Palestine" is cohesive, peace-loving and patriotic, not a hotbed of rivalries, feuds, and warring clans.
Yet two months ago, the world watched as Hamas executed rivals in Gaza. Between September 27 and October 5, 2025, video footage confirmed the murders of 33 people, most shot in the head. These were just the cases captured on camera.
How many people were murdered in 2022 by Hamas, the PA, or as part of internecine clan violence? There is evidence for eight. Many more murders were resolved, however, through tribal sulha, a private process in which clan elders negotiate blood-money payments and impose silence. This category is believed to be hundreds per year.
Honor killings. My colleague, Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D., wrote a book about it, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing. Global honor killing takes the lives of over 20,000 women annually, she writes. Wives, daughters, or sisters are murdered in retribution over shame or dishonor family members perceive as having resulted from a woman’s alleged immoral behavior.
There is an Arabic word describing the act: jara’im al-sharaf, “crimes of honor." The Arabic term contains connotations of righteousness.
Journalist Robert Fisk-a longtime Israel-basher-agrees with Dr. Chesler’s figure of 20,000 or more. Extrapolated for population, that would mean that 50-60 women fall victim to honor killing annually in Gaza and Arab communities in Judea and Samaria.
Why does honor killing remain prevalent? Hamas’ maximum prison sentence for honor killing is 24 months.
Hadd al-liwaṭ. That is the Islamic legal term for capital punishment for homosexuals and is not considered honor killings. Gays are sometimes murdered extra-judicially by Palestinian security forces or Arab lynch mobs.
In 2022, there was one reported case. Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, 25, was beheaded in Hebron without a trial. These cases are usually shrouded forever in secrecy. Authorities are complicit and usually label them as accidents, suicides, or family disputes.
Suspicious deaths in custodyand extra-judicial murder are a problem, too. Political dissidents, political rivals, and others seem to disappear or expire with disturbing regularity.
The family of Nasser Soliman Salem Abu, 52, said he was murdered in custody on October 16, 2022 by Hamas after being subjected to electric shock torture and shabeh. That is a torture method that involves binding a prisoner in painful, awkward positions for extended periods (hours to days). The torture triggered a fatal heart attack, they say.
On June 24, 2021, Nizar Banat, 42, was arrested by the PA. Mr. Banat was a critic of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. He had a large social media following. Healthy on the day of his arrest, he nonetheless died of asphyxiation after his lungs filled with blood from an extreme beating by President Abbas’ thugs.
The PA will never report homicides it caused. Nor should it be expected to take note of those caused by Hamas in Gaza. It is therefore a challenge to quantify how many civilians are murdered in custody. In 2025, this category of homicide may run into the hundreds as both Hamas and the PA continue to purge competitors.
Making all of these categories harder to quantify is the fact that neither the PA nor Hamas maintains an accurate and transparent system for tracking births and deaths. Autopsies are also rare.
The last category of unreported murder is terrorism. In 2022, six Jewish civilians were murdered in Judea and Samaria. They were Shalom Sofer, Ronen Hanania, Tamir Avichai, Michael Ladygin, Motti Ashkenazi, and Vyacheslav Golev.
The PA does not count the murder of Jewish civilians in its statistics, only Arabs and the occasional Arab Christian. Nor does the PA prosecute those who kill Jews. They celebrate it and reward the murderers and their families as part of the PA’s official “pay-for-slay" program, which has been covered extensively before.
Should we be surprised that a fictitious “State of Palestine" is submitting fictitious crime statistics? True to form, when the PA lies, it lies big. So why shouldn’t the PA portray its make-believe country as being as safe as Switzerland?
The question remains: how many murders were there in areas controlled by the PA and Hamas in 2022?
It is impossible to know with certainty. Yet a reasonable estimate that includes all of the previously omitted categories of homicide would be at least 700 in 2022.
That means the “State of Palestine" has an intentional homicide rate of 12.8 per 100,000. At that rate it no longer resembles the Swiss Alps.
Rami Chris Robbins focuses on Middle East issues and foreign policy. You can write to him at chris@jcrobbins.com