Proposed new Israeli laws could increase arrests and police abuse

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is promoting changes in legislation and law enforcement that could pave the way for a surge of politically-motivated arrests and other abuses by police, democracy watchdogs are warning.

A proposed amendment that would eliminate the requirement that police obtain approval from state attorneys before making arrests for alleged incitement has “very dangerous implications”, Israel Democracy Institute scholar Amir Fuchs told The Jewish Independent.

The amendment, proposed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party also broadens the definition of what constitutes punishable incitement. Taken together, this would create a situation in which “there are liable to be many arrests that are political arrests rather than actually being connected to terror,” Fuchs said.

He is not the only one worried. Referring to the proposal, Haaretz last week headlined an editorial: ”A green light for political arrests. This is how Ben-Gvir and the police impose a regime of fear”.

Ben-Gvir, himself convicted in the past of eight offences including supporting terrorism and racist incitement, has stacked the top ranks of the police with allies who are seen as sharing his coercive view of the police’s role in society.

Ben-Gvir, a disciple of the late anti-Arab rabbi Meir Kahane, who reviled democracy, made clear in an interview with Channel Fourteen early this year that officers who are criticised in the media for violence toward protesters will be prioritised for promotions. “One of the indications that someone is good is that they do shaming against him in Haaretz. I say, bring me the article and we will discuss options for promotion,” he said.

One of Ben-Gvir’s key promotions was of Superintendent Meir Suissa to chief of police for south Tel Aviv, despite his being under indictment for throwing a stun grenade into a crowd of protesters in March. A Jerusalem district court judge two weeks ago froze the promotion.

Critics of the coalition say all of this amounts to the incentivising of violence and abuses towards demonstrators, even against relatives of Gaza hostages, and encouraging illegal arrests and aggressive use of equestrian forces and water cannons.

“There is a new policy that police are defending the interests of the government rather than citizens’ rights of freedom to demonstrate. We believe there’s been a coup in Israel and that the police has already fallen,” says Gaby Lasky, a left wing former MK and lawyer.

The Israel Police says such criticism is false: “The Israel Police operates as an apolitical institution dedicated to handling offenses with impartiality and professionalism. Allegations that the police are influenced by political agendas distort the truth and undermine the rule of law.”

“While the right to protest and freedom of expression are fundamental in a democratic society, these rights must be exercised within the framework of the law,” the police added. “When protests escalate into disturbances that threaten public security, including the safety of protesters, we use all available resources to manage and resolve these situations effectively.”

Jewish Power legislator Limor Son Har Melech, who is pushing the controversial amendment, says it is necessary because getting permission for arrests from state attorneys is fraught with “repeated and constant delays”.

Coalition MKs say the October 7 massacres by Hamas and the current situation of war underscore the need to act firmly against incitement. But human rights lawyers say authorities even without the amendment, have already gone way too far, at times pursuing Palestinian Israelis for posts that merely voice sympathy for the suffering of Gazans.

Fuchs says the supposed problem of delays on the part of the state attorneys is a fabrication to justify removing oversight of the police. If the amendment becomes law “one can expect a great number of baseless complaints and needless arrests,” Fuchs predicts. Even though they probably will not lead to indictments, the arrests “will have a chilling effect that will cause people to be afraid to criticise the government, certainly in the Arab sector”.

Adding to the concerns of police power abuse is a dubious recent arrest of three women who had placed fliers on seats in an empty synagogue calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas. The synagogue in Herzliya is used by coalition MK Yuli Edelstein. The flier featured a picture of Edelstein from the time when he was a prisoner of Zion, barred from leaving the Soviet Union; the words ‘Let my People Go’; and pictures of six hostages.

Police came to the women's homes the next day and cuffed their hands and feet before taking them away for interrogation. The police initially maintained they were suspected of “breaking in” to a place of worship. But it emerged from security footage they had simply walked into the synagogue, an unlocked area kept open to the public, and that police had failed to obtain arrest warrants.

Yael Litmanovitz, senior researcher in IDI’s Center for Security and Democracy, says the incident raises tough questions about police conduct and the attitudes that are spreading under Ben-Gvir.

“Police should know the law and that there is no cause for the arrest. We can ask if the police is still being guided primarily by law or whether they are politically motivated, whether it’s small politics that they want to look good to their superiors in order to get ahead, or whether it’s big politics that plays into one political camp’s agenda,” Litmanovitz said.

Barele Crombie, a right wing activist who organised demonstrations last year in support of the coalition, told The Jewish Independent that criticism stemming from the arrests is misplaced. “The police decided to protect MK Edelstein. Anyone who concludes from this that we are turning into a police state has a reality problem.”

Crombie, who is a leading supporter of the coalition on social media, claims that protesters against the government are not a home-grown, legitimate opposition force, but rather are linked to international radicals bent on violent change. Ben-Gvir is merely “making efforts to restore order” after a year of foreign-inspired protests, according to Crombie.

But the minister’s critics say the politicisation of the police under Ben-Gvir is evident not only from what the force does, but also from what it does not do.

They stress that there have been no arrests among the rightists who in August broke into two army bases in a bid to thwart the military judiciary’s arrest and interrogation of soldiers suspected of sodomising a Palestinian detainee. The break in, during which Ben-Gvir’s closest allies played important roles, was considered by many to be one of the greatest challenges to the rule of law in Israeli history, akin to the January 6, 2021 storming of the capitol in Washington.

Nor has Ben-Gvir assigned essential police protection to trucks conveying humanitarian aid to Gaza, creating a situation in which their drivers were stopped and assaulted by rightists despite Israeli international commitments to facilitate the delivery of aid.

Similarly, rights groups say violent settlers who are part of Ben-Gvir’s base in the occupied West Bank are not sought by police after they carry out attacks against Palestinians and their property.

Within Israel, the murder rate in Arab communities, already high when Ben-Gvir took office, is increasing sharply during his tenure. A car bomb in Ramle killed four people on September 15, two days after a bomb in Acre wounded five people, including a four year old.

Ben-Gvir has given scant indication of how he intends to bring things under control, while blaming Israeli Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara for the problem. Had she agreed to Ben-Gvir’s call to use administrative detentions, a draconian practice usually reserved for the West Bank, the problem would have been solved, he said at the murder scene in Ramle.

But many Arab and Jewish observers believe that the high Arab murder rate is a problem Ben-Gvir doesn’t actually want to solve. Esawi Frej, former minister of regional cooperation, told The Jewish Independent that while Arab society itself bears blame for the bloodshed, it would be a mistake to expect Ben-Gvir to try to reduce it. ”Ben-Gvir lives off of anarchy and hate,” Frej said. “He wants violence in Arab society.”

Lasky, the former MK, stresses that it would be a mistake to ascribe the politicisation of the Israel police to Ben-Gvir alone. In her view, it is an integral part of the same antidemocratic program as last year’s attempts by Netanyahu to weaken the supreme court.

“Netanyahu is the one who put Ben-Gvir in charge. Without Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir wouldn’t be able to do this,” Lasky said.

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