Shin Bet warns expansion of remit to police crime in Palestinian community in Israel could 'weaken fight against terror'

Ronen Bar, the chief of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, warned at a meeting at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Sunday that plans to divert the organisation’s resources to fight crime among Palestinian citizens of Israel will have detrimental effects on "the fight against terrorism". 

The criticism comes amid the planned expansion of the remit of the Shin Bet, which was set up to deal mainly with "external terror threats", into crime within the Palestinian community in Israel.

The meeting was held to address a wave of criminal violence tearing through the minority community.

Last week, five people were killed in the town of Yafia near Nazareth due to an alleged dispute between organised crime families. This incident was referenced by Netanyahu on Sunday when justifying the expansion of the Shin Bet’s responsibilities.

"Despite the difficulties [with resources] – the Shin Bet’s abilities must be harnessed in the fight against crime families in the Arab community," Haaretz reported Netanyahu as telling the meeting. 

The Shin Bet will now, on Netanyahu’s orders, be fully integrated into Israeli efforts to combat “Arab crime families”. 

Bar, as well as other high-ranking members of the Shin Bet, say that the agency's deepening involvement in "non-terror-related" crime in Palestinian communities will spread the agency too thin, giving the upper hand to so-called "terrorists". 

There is also fear that use of the Shin Bet’s unique techniques in combatting "terror" will now become public knowledge, which could help Palestinian resistance groups evade and counter such techniques.

Under Netanyahu’s far-right government, the Shin Bet has vastly broadened its operations among Palestinian citizens of Israel. It has begun aiding the Israeli police with criminal investigations that border on "nationalist crimes", such as locating suspects who have fled to the occupied West Bank.

There is a consensus among Palestinian citizens of Israel that something must be done to address what many feel is the bias in Israeli policing, in addition to discriminatory social factors, that has allowed crime to flourish in their communities.

This year alone has seen 102 Palestinian citizens of Israel killed in homicides.

However, there is also fear that it could be used as a pretext by the far-right Israeli government to target them for political or racist reasons and further erode their rights as citizens.

Some Palestinians fear that Netanyahu's mandate for the Shin Bet could be used as a pretext to further persecute Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Most concerningly for Palestinians in Israel, many of those present at the meeting - including Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai,  National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi - couched their fears over the Shin Bet's lack of resources in terms that would mean giving the Israeli security forces new powers, such as use of the outlawed Pegasus spyware and detention without trial.