How prominent are Palestinian crime families/groups by the way ? I think I've read about some being active in NYC and Chicago back in the 80s and 90s , but they seem to be defunct as of now .
They exist, but I wouldn't call them especially prominent or powerful. The Abou-Chakers (Palestinians who came from the refugee camp in Lebanon to Berlin) do have a reputation in Germany, but they're smaller fish compared to the Mardelli-Lebanese clans.
There is Palestinian organized crime in the Israeli and Palestinian territories, but especially on a bigger scale they don't hold a candle to traditional Israeli OC (the classic crime families of North African, mostly Moroccan, Jewish background), Russian-Israeli organized crime (which is largely connected to the bigger Russian groups) or the Georgian-Israeli clans that act as a broker between the crime groups from the former Soviet Union (Russia as well as the Caucasus) and the Israeli underworld. The Melikhov clan, led by Abraham Melikhov, was extremely active in Antwerp and were the intermediaries when other Soviet and Israeli crime figures wanted to have dealings in the city. The Melikhovs were one example, but there's said to be 5 to 6 large Georgian Jewish clans active in the Israeli underworld.
In New York there was Moussa Aliyan and Tala Siksik, both Palestinian heroin traffickers, but they were whacked by respectively the Israelis and the Bonanno's. It was Pitera that killed Siksik to be precise.
