The events of October 7 have forgotten the nine months of crime that preceded them. The Ministry of National Security has made it its mission to significantly reduce serious crime offenses, first and foremost the many murders in Arab society.
Have the necessary resources been allocated for this purpose? Have significant legislative changes been made? Have the enforcement agencies significantly improved their ability to deal with what is happening? The unequivocal answer is no.
Over the past year, we have witnessed a significant increase in the number of murdered in the State of Israel. In 2023, a total of 299 people were murdered, including 241 in the Arab sector – double the number murdered last year.
Facing the extent of increasing crime is the Israel Police, which has suffered from a severe shortage of manpower and budgets in recent years, and which requires supreme efforts to improve and improve its response capabilities.
During the war, thousands volunteered for the police, but the expectation is that at the end of the fighting, the Israel Police will return to its great manpower shortage.
The police are required to demonstrate advanced technological capabilities, are required to collect preventive intelligence using innovative technologies, which also include visual means from various cameras and advanced listening and surveillance technologies, and are required to operate in the social networks arena, similar to the way intelligence is collected from human sources and police agents.
The low rate of solving murders in the Arab sector, about 8 per cent, stems not only from a shortage of manpower and resources, but also from non-cooperation on the part of witnesses due to fear for their lives. The difficulty in collecting evidence leads to the phenomenon of indictments being filed on reduced counts in plea bargain proceedings.
In order to deal more effectively with the phenomenon of murder, with an emphasis on the Arab sector, and to improve our national resilience as individuals and as a society, strict punishment must be employed to deter criminal elements from carrying out their plot. Fewer plea bargains – and more exhaustion of legal proceedings in order to achieve maximum and deterrent punishment.
In order to deal more effectively with the phenomenon of murder, with an emphasis on the Arab sector, and to improve our national resilience as individuals and as a society, strict punishment must be employed to deter criminal elements from carrying out their plot
It is still too early to predict how the war will affect serious crime in the State of Israel. We can expect a significant increase in cycles of poverty and economic distress, which will lead to an increase in crime and violence rates and a recurrence of the murders we witnessed before the outbreak of the war.
The quantities of illegal weapons that already exist, along with the amount of weapons distributed during the war that may end up in criminal elements, can increase the availability of danger. Our moral obligation to all those who are no longer with us is to learn the lessons of 2023, the year of bloodshed and no man's land, and to fundamentally change the way we deal with the dangers that lie before us as a nation.
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