Palestinian bus drivers are on the front lines of Israeli racial violence

Security and rescue forces are seen at the scene where an ultra-Orthodox teenager was killed and three others were wounded after being hit by a bus during a mass demonstration against the enlistment of ultra-Orthodox Jews to the Israeli army, Jerusalem, January 6, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

During a mass demonstration by Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community against conscription to the Israeli military last week, Palestinian bus driver Fakhri Khatib, driving Egged bus 64, found himself surrounded by a mob of young protesters banging on the side of the bus. He called the police for help, but none arrived.

In a bid to escape the mob, he first reversed the bus several meters. But the protesters followed, and soon managed to prise open the door. As they forced their way inside, they kicked, spat at, and threatened Khatib, leading him to fear for his life. At this point he accelerated forward, unaware that 14-year old Yosef Eisenthal was clinging to the underside of the front bumper. Eisenthal was killed as Khatib drove away, while three more teenagers were wounded.

Two other Palestinian bus drivers, neither of whom have spoken publicly, were attacked that night. One, driving Superbus line 516 through the neighborhood of Bayit VeGan, reported protesters throwing objects at his bus before boarding and then beating him so severely that he required medical evacuation. The second, driving line 77 close to where Eisenthal was killed, reported teenagers discharging a fire extinguisher directly at him, almost suffocating him.

Khatib, a resident of East Jerusalem, was released from house arrest this week but faces charges of negligent homicide (ultra-Orthodox members of Knesset unsuccessfully campaigned for an aggravated murder charge). “If Khatib had known that someone was clinging to the bus, he would not have driven another meter,” his lawyer told Haaretz.

The case has thrust renewed attention onto a phenomenon that bus drivers and labor unions have been grappling with for years. In 2014, a year punctuated by a devastating Israeli military assault on Gaza, one in every three Jerusalem bus drivers quit their jobs amid escalating violence that peaked when driver Yousef Hassan Al-Ramouni was found hanged in his bus (Israeli officials ruled his death a suicide, but many drivers believed Al-Ramouni had been murdered).

In 2017, there were 18 reported cases of assaults against bus drivers across Israel and the West Bank — roughly one to two per month. Violent incidents further spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic as those who refused to wear masks retaliated against bus drivers, while a group of ultra-Orthodox men torched a bus and beat a driver in protest of the government-enforced lockdown.

But according to Koach LaOvdim (“Power to the Workers”), a trade union that has represented bus drivers since 2015 and now organizes roughly one-third of drivers nationwide, violence has surged to unprecedented levels over the past two years in a climate shaped by the aftermath of October 7 and Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Bus drivers with Koach LaOvdim protest against violence directed at them outside the Transport Ministry in Jerusalem, April 29, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

In 2024, more than 70 assaults on bus drivers were recorded in Jerusalem alone. In 2025, the union logged over 100 incidents in the city (these figures do not include verbal attacks, which are too frequent to document).

Haifa ranks second in the country, with roughly 60 attacks on bus drivers and transit staff in 2025 — a 25 percent increase from the previous year — underscoring how the violence is not geographically isolated. And according to Nitzan Tenami, Koach LaOvdim’s head of union organizing, the violence has not dwindled since the ceasefire.

Koach LaOvdim is the only organization systematically tracking these attacks; Israel’s police do not maintain any such records. The union says the true scope of violence is far greater than their numbers suggest, as many drivers — particularly Palestinians — do not file complaints, fearing retaliation or seeing it as futile given that 90 percent of reported cases are closed without charges.

That violent incidents against bus drivers occur most frequently in Jerusalem and Haifa is no coincidence: The transportation networks in both cities rely heavily on Palestinian labor. In Jerusalem, Koach LaOvdim estimates that roughly 90 percent of bus drivers are Palestinian, most of them permanent residents of East Jerusalem. In Haifa, meanwhile, Palestinian citizens make up around 60 percent of drivers and transit staff.

“Arab bus drivers are an easy target for violence,” said Murad Attoun, a union representative for Jerusalem bus drivers and a former West Bank bus driver who himself endured repeated abuse on the job. Unlike many other sectors Palestinians work in, where interaction with Jewish Israelis can be limited, bus drivers are highly visible and interact with every sector of Israeli society — often alone and without protection.

‘When they understand the driver is Arab, violence erupts’

In Jerusalem, most violent incidents tend to fall into two broad categories. The first involves soccer fans — particularly those attending matches of Beitar Jerusalem, a club long associated with Israel’s far right, racist chants, and its “La Familia” ultras fan group, which counts National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir among its supporters.

Members of La Familia group protest against the intention of Beitar owner Moshe Hogeg to sell a percentage of the group to a member of the UAE royalty, at Beitar Jerusalem training ground in Jerusalem, Dec. 4, 2020. (Flash90)

In May, Ahmad Qara’in was one of two Palestinian drivers beaten by fans angered by the club’s loss in the State Cup final. He was driving the 77 line, which ends near the stadium, when fans got on the bus and attacked him. “They identified that I was Arab after they spoke with me,” he said. “They started — out of nowhere — to yell at me, ‘Death to Arabs,’ to curse, and to attack me.”

After another Beitar loss to Hapoel Be’er-Sheva on Nov. 2, video footage showed fans crowding the streets, smashing bus windows, and chanting “Death to Arabs.”

In response, left-wing Jewish activists from the groups Bnei Avraham and Standing Together have begun organizing “protective presence” shifts — a solidarity tool generally used in the West Bank to deter settler violence — on bus routes after Beitar games. The activists ride these buses in an effort to deter attacks, or at least document and report any violence.

“We know the violence is worst around the games, although they’re not the only occasions, unfortunately,” Dvir Warshavshy, an organizer with Bnei Avraham, told +972. During the initiative’s first action on Nov. 30, the night of a Beitar match, 15 activists were spread across routes serving the stadium.

“The fact that no one cares about [bus drivers’] safety is part of a wider problem of the power structures here and the racism against Palestinians,” Warshavshy added.

The second major source of violence is young ultra-Orthodox men. During protests last fall against mandatory military service, drivers reported stone throwing, assaults, and vandalism at rest areas, including the tearing of prayer rugs.

“The attacks are very related to what is happening in the country,” Tenami of Koach LaOvdim told +972. Many drivers now request routes that don’t pass through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods like Mea She’arim, knowing that the risk of abuse is significantly higher.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews block a bus during a protest against enlistment to the Israeli army on Route 1, Jerusalem, December 25, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Whereas in Jerusalem it is bus drivers themselves who are most often the targets of violence, in Haifa attacks are more frequently directed at Palestinian ticket inspectors. “The moment the passenger understands that the worker is Arab, he assumes a racist posture,” Ayman Wahib, Koach LaOvdim’s representative in Haifa and a former driver himself, told +972. “The moment the passenger feels free in his racism, violence erupts.”

In August, a ticket inspector on Haifa’s Metro Line 1 was attacked for the second time on the job by a couple well known to transport employees for refusing to pay. When asked for their tickets, the couple began cursing at the inspector, before kicking him when he asked them to calm down.

The inspector pleaded with them and threatened to call the police, but the passengers only became more aggressive. When he got off the bus, the couple followed him and continued beating him with a broom they found on the street. Police arrived more than an hour later. “Our lives are in danger,” the inspector told the local news outlet Haipo at the time.

But nor are drivers spared. On Dec. 3, a group of teenagers boarded the 37 bus in Haifa’s city center, blocked the doors, and beat the 50 year-old driver. Unionized drivers on that route went on a two-hour strike the following day and threatened a city-wide shutdown if the violence continued.

Union officials say Israel’s two-year war on Gaza has intensified racism toward Arabs, making assaults both more likely and severe. “In Haifa, in general, the level of violence [directed toward bus personnel] after October 7 increased dramatically,” Wahib said. The same is true in Jerusalem, Attoun noted: “The biggest reason for this spike in violence is the war.”

‘Once you get attacked, it’s hard to get back behind the wheel’

Police classify assaults on bus drivers as attacks on public servants, an offense punishable by up to four years in prison. Yet suspects are seldom arrested, and even more rarely punished. Investigations are frequently closed for “lack of evidence” or for supposedly failing to meet the public interest threshold, despite the fact that incidents have resulted in passengers getting hurt too. Moreover, most buses in Israel are equipped with video cameras, while passenger testimony is often available and widely shared on social media.

This lack of protection appears to be a significant factor in causing roughly half of bus drivers in Israel — who already have to grapple with poor working conditions and long hours — to leave the profession within a year. “People are scared,” Tenami said. “Once you get attacked on a bus, it’s really hard to get back behind the wheel.”

Drivers who work for the Kavim bus company demonstrate against violence directed at them near the Knesset in Jerusalem, with a banner that reads “Enough with violence against drivers!”, December 17, 2018. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Riad Al-Hasini quit his job with Superbus in November after being pepper-sprayed on his Jerusalem route during a confrontation over an unpaid fare. “I don’t want to set out for work without knowing whether or not I’ll come back,” he told Haaretz.

A similar incident occurred one night last October: Mohammed Abu Rayan was driving his usual route — the 74 line, which runs from northern Jerusalem through the city center to the settlement of Har Homa — when a car pulled up alongside his bus, its driver honking and accusing Abu Rayan of hitting him. Though there were no signs of damage, Abu Rayan pulled over to speak with the man.

According to Abu Rayan, as he stepped off the bus, he realized the accusation had been a ruse. The man charged at him and pepper-sprayed his eyes before getting back in his car and driving off.

Abu Rayan immediately called the police, but when officers arrived, he said they “pretended to look,” but showed no urgency to document or investigate the incident. “They don’t know who did it and aren’t trying to figure it out,” he told +972. The police have not followed up with him since.

Jewish drivers are also affected — and while the violence they face is more often verbal than physical, it is still pervasive.

According to Koach LaOvdim, most Jewish bus drivers are Mizrahi, tracing their roots to Arab and Muslim countries. In a cruel irony, some Jewish drivers say they are targeted precisely because passengers mistake them for Palestinians. One driver told Bar Ilan, of Koach LaOvdim, a story that “sums it all up”: He began wearing a kippah not out of religious conviction, but solely to avoid being identified as Arab.

Similarly, many Jewish drivers decorate their buses with Israeli flags or stickers from their former army units — a practice that is technically forbidden. When then-Transport Minister Merav Michaeli began enforcing the ban in 2021, drivers protested fiercely. “They were really upset,” Tenami recalled.

When the police prove ineffective at holding attackers accountable, unions have turned to protest. After a 2018 attack on Palestinian driver Nidal Fakih, for example, which occurred when two of his passengers identified him as Arab, more than 100 drivers hung signs reading “Enough with violence against drivers” across their dashboards (an Israeli court still ruled that the attack was merely road rage rather than a hate crime). Koach LaOvdim has also boycotted specific areas when they become especially dangerous, and demanded the establishment of local police stations where attacks are concentrated.

Nidal Fakih, a driver who was attacked by young Israelis the week before, speaks to the media during a protest of Kavim bus drivers against violence directed at them, near the Knesset in Jerusalem, December 17, 2018. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The union has also pushed for preventative measures, like security personnel on high-risk routes. These have resulted in some progress: Starting on Jan. 15, there will be police on motorcycles dedicated to curbing bus violence by circulating high-risk routes. Yet Jerusalem and Rahat will only get three such officers, while all other major cities, like Haifa, will get two. Meanwhile, nearly two and a half years ago, the government approved and funded a NIS 20 million ($5.7 million) plan to create a bus security unit. To date, the money remains unspent and the unit nonexistent.

Despite the danger, bus driving remains one of few viable employment options for Palestinians. Over three-quarters of Palestinians in East Jerusalem live below the poverty line, and among those of working age and seeking employment, 40 percent of male and 85 percent of female residents are not active in the labor market.

Heightened anti-Arab racism and movement restrictions that followed October 7 led to an eight percent rise in unemployment among Jerusalemite Palestinians. The trend is being accelerated by the more than 850,000 migrant workers from east and southeast Asia brought in to replace Palestinian laborers from the West Bank whose permits to work inside Israel were revoked during the war.

Amid such economic strangulation, bus driving is comparatively lucrative, with drivers earning three-times the average East Jerusalem salary. “If there were a better job I would leave,” Abu Rayan said. “There is no other option.”

Still, Israel faces a shortage of roughly 5,000 bus drivers, though the gap is narrowing — partly because Palestinians continue filling the demand, and partly because of the influx of migrant workers. The Transport Ministry has announced plans to bring in 1,000 foreign drivers, a move unions say threatens already precarious jobs.

Today, one of Koach LaOvdim’s main priorities is protecting these jobs for Israelis and Palestinians, positioning itself as a rare space of Jewish-Arab solidarity.

‘Having a Palestinian-Jewish union is not easy’

Until 2000, Israel’s public bus system was dominated by two cooperatives, Egged and Dan, which together operated roughly 95 percent of the country’s routes. That year, a sweeping privatization reform began to fracture the system. Over the course of the next two decades, around half of bus services were transferred to private operators, as 15 bus companies competed for regional contracts by cutting costs.

For drivers, the consequences were immediate and prolonged. Salaries fell while hours went up, and full-time positions with benefits like pensions and pay raises were turned into short-term contracts with little upward mobility.

Employees of the Egged bus company protest outside the Finance Ministry to demand better pay and working conditions, Jerusalem, October 2, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

It was against this backdrop that Koach LaOvdim emerged. Founded in 2015, the union positioned itself as an alternative to the other unions representing drivers: the Histadrut, Israel’s dominant labor federation; the union of Egged employees; and the Likud-affiliated Histadrut Leumit. Koach LaOvdim, by contrast, emphasized internal democracy: Major decisions — like when to go on strike, whether to change internal procedures, and electing leadership — are made democratically via members’ votes.

Despite Jewish members tending to lean to the right of Israel’s political spectrum, they have come to the defense of their Arab colleagues when assaulted. “There’s full support from the Jewish drivers — it’s a joint effort,” Tenami said.

This solidarity between Jewish and Palestinian drivers is cultivated by their shared experiences of the job — the poor working conditions, long hours, constant verbal harassment, and the threat of violence. Moreover, working together has proven effective: Through collective bargaining and strikes since 2015, Koach LaOvdim drivers have nearly doubled their hourly salary, from the minimum wage of NIS 29 ($9.20) to NIS 52 ($16.50) per hour.

Nevertheless, “having a Palestinian-Jewish union is not easy,” Tenami reflected. Often, the union struggles to maintain an “uneasy balance” of interests between its members.

After October 7, union leadership worried that disagreements between Jews and Palestinians would bring the organization to a halt. “The things happening in society enter the union,” Tenami explained. Yet the union’s leadership — comprising both Jews and Palestinians — managed to preserve the internal unity throughout the war by continuously emphasizing its members’ shared interests.

Across the country, but especially in Jerusalem, the majority of voting members of bus drivers’ unions are Palestinian. “I think it helps that the Jews are the minority in the union,” Tenami said. “It’s a political setting — you want to be voted for. You can’t be racist against 80 percent of your voters.”

Currently in negotiations with the Labor Ministry, Koach LaOvdim’s Superbus drivers have threatened to go on strike in response to violence, and shut down lines in Jerusalem, Haifa, Afula, and other cities in which the company operates. “The strike is a good idea, we need to do something,” Abu Rayan said.

While drivers go on strike fairly consistently — last year, Koach LaOvdim’s Jerusalem drivers did so for two hours after two consecutive incidents of passengers unleashing tear gas on buses, and in 2022 and 2023 drivers from Superbus and Electra Afikim went on strike in response to violence — they are eager to avoid industrial action, as violence often gets worse after a strike. Assigned consistent routes, drivers fear having to again face the angry customers they refused service.

Koach LaOvdim is working with the Jerusalem and Haifa municipal governments, members of the Knesset, and the wider public to put measures in place to deter violence, but it is doubtful that sustainable, long-term solutions will emerge any time soon or that violence will suddenly decrease. Most likely, drivers will be pushed to strike as a last resort. “The violence keeps on coming,” Tenami said regretfully.

The Jerusalem District Police did not respond to requests for comment.

Dikla Taylor-Sheinman contributed to this report.

Charlotte Ritz-Jack is the Editorial Fellow at +972 Magazine based in Jerusalem. She graduated from Harvard College in the spring of 2025.