Yossi Mekelberg
It is indisputable that the levels of intracommunity homicide and other forms of violence and criminality generally in the towns and villages of the Palestinian citizens of Israel are beyond horrific. The entire Arab community in Israel has been rocked by the scale of the killings. At the time of writing, 165 Palestinian citizens of Israel have been murdered in this year alone, compared to 111 in all of last year, which itself was an extremely disturbing number. It can also hardly be contested that much of this situation can be attributed to decades of neglect and discrimination, much of it deliberate, by Israeli administrations since the very early days of the country’s independence.
Yet, the current Israeli government’s approach to resolving this steep increase in deadly crime is taken from the playbook of authoritarian regimes, not democracies. Much of it is due to the disproportionate influence of the far right in the ruling coalition, and especially the handing over of key ministries that deal with policing and resource allocation to their representatives.
A number of these ministers are settlers whose racist mindset prompts them to demand that methods of enforcing law and order similar to the deplorable procedures used in the occupied West Bank be applied to Palestinians who are citizens of Israel and should therefore, at least in principle, enjoy the same rights as their Jewish fellow countrymen and women. In other words, they are calling for the violation of the basic human rights of a group that makes up 20 percent of Israel’s population. Two of the most worrying suggestions from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir are to get the Shin Bet security service involved in investigations of homicides in this community and to introduce so-called administrative detentions.
The role of the Shin Bet is to deal with threats to national security, not with criminal activities. Even the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, has expressed strong reservations about the organization becoming involved in investigations that are not national security-related. It was reported that, in a discussion with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Bar said: “If the state involves the Shin Bet in every complex problem it’s faced with, it will become a different country.” By “a different country,” he meant one not only where the lines between national security issues and criminality are blurred, but one whose internal security force has descended a slippery slope to become a tool in the hands of the government for political purposes.
Admittedly, in recent weeks, more politicians and civil servants in the Palestinian municipalities have been targeted by gangs who are trying to spread fear and force them to serve the economic interests of organized crime. But if the Shin Bet is to be used, it must be in very specific cases, pending the permission of the courts, to ensure there is no subtext being employed by the National Security Ministry, and especially the anti-Arab Ben-Gvir, of exploiting such situations in order to violate the human, political and civil rights of Palestinians who are citizens of Israel.
For Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and the other representatives of the Religious Zionist party, there is no perceptual difference between Palestinians who are citizens of Israel and those who are not (and this does not even remotely justify the decades-long deprivation of the human rights of Palestinians living under occupation). Both are seen by them as enemies. Ben-Gvir, in another of his bigoted outbursts, has argued that “the weapons used in Arab crime are seeping over into terrorist activity. What can we do when it’s one against the other, or against IDF soldiers?” With these comments, he conveniently conflated what is happening within Israel with what is taking place in the West Bank to serve his political agenda.
If involving the Shin Bet in moves to curb murders within the Palestinian community is one step that causes deep suspicion about the true intentions of the ultranationalist members of the government, their call to use administrative detention against crime bosses leaves no room for doubt.
Administrative detentions should, as a rule, only be used in rare cases when it is necessary to counter an immediate and extreme threat as, by definition, administrative detainees have not committed a crime. But these powers can easily be misused to incarcerate people indefinitely and not for the reasons claimed by the authorities. Because no admissible evidence is presented and no charges are brought in most of these cases – meaning that no verdict is reached and thus no sentence applied – those who are administratively detained could potentially remain in custody indefinitely without being convicted. This is an official miscarriage of justice and, in this case, is targeting a specific ethnic group.
But it does not stop there. Unless forced to change his decision, Ben-Gvir’s racist twin, Finance Minister Smotrich, intends to withhold more than $50 million in funding from Palestinian municipalities. He has defended his plan by arguing that, without proper oversight, the funds would end up in the hands of organized criminal groups. Needless to say, he did not present a shred of evidence to back up this spurious claim.
It is one of the right wing’s many bizarre claims that to improve economic conditions among the Palestinian citizens of Israel would lead to a rise in crime because there would be money to be stolen or extracted through protection rackets. By this logic, all societies should be forced into poverty to prevent crime. Israel’s Jewish society is way more affluent, yet the level of crime, including homicide, is not a fraction of that of Arab society.
The reality is that there is not enough investment in policing, job creation, education and general development for Israel’s Palestinian community. Instead, there is only chronic neglect. And this is simply because the racist far right in Israel is not bothered about Arabs killing Arabs.
Only recently, the Knesset passed a law that enforces dual punishments for sexual offences with “nationalist motivation,” as if that can be either proved as such or if it makes it worse than any other rape. Once again, this is a deflection from the incompetence of this government, which, as with Ben-Gvir’s recent suggestions, prefers to sow hatred and division within Israeli society rather than look for any constructive solution. Hatred and incitement are this government’s forte and, until it is brought down, it will continue to do what fascist-like governments always do, which is to blame minorities for their own hardships and suffering and to punish them for that.
