Late last December, Shir Aharon Bram, a Jerusalem social activist, wrote a Facebook post about the demonstration he had attended the previous night across from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem. Four police officers had removed him from the site. He didn’t resist, and they hoisted him in the air and carried him to a different place. On the way, one of the policemen said to him, “Listen, man, everything’s okay, don’t resist, and we’ll finish this fast. We don’t want to hurt you.” Bram replied, “Fine, and thank you.” A second officer said, “We’re fed up with you demonstrators, we’ve had it up to here. If you dare move, it’ll be excruciatingly painful for you. If you resist, I will see to it that you spend the night in detention.” Bram summed up the event like this: “Basically, they both said the same thing – the whole difference is in the approach.”
This minor story, about differences of approach displayed by two police officers, is an excellent illustration of a far larger problem. For some seven years, from 2011 to 2018, during the tenures of police commissioners Yohanan Danino and Roni Alsheich, the Israel Police devoted much effort to creating relations of trust with “normative” citizens. In June 2015, when Danino retired, he published an article in the newspaper Israel Hayom which began, “Whereas the central goal was to raise the level of personal security of the country’s citizens… it was clear to me that for that purpose the police force needed to be far more effective and efficient, and I thought that the major element that bore the greatest influence on its effectiveness was the level of the public’s trust in the police.”
Indeed, building trust was a key issue in research the police undertook, in its activity and in the discourse they conducted inwardly and outwardly. That concept continued to be central during Alsheich’s term of office as well.
After the latter’s retirement, all that faded away. It’s difficult to single out one reason, but perhaps the main one is that it simply didn’t work. Despite the efforts by the police, the crisis of trust between them and Israel’s citizenry persists, and in fact, since 2018, has become far more acute.
The level of frustration among the police rose from year to year, and the result today seems to be that the police have given up and are no longer trying to resolve their ongoing conflict with Israeli society peacefully. The responses from the spokesperson’s unit to articles about police activity are laconic and don’t even try to address the issues substantively. The research that the Israel Police publishes no longer addresses the question of trust as it did in the past. And if in the previous decade, the police felt that they tried to extend a hand to the citizenry and were bitten in return, now they look as if they’re embarking on war.
According to a document issued last month by Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai, the force’s new work plan will focus on “Respect for the Police Officer.” For example, by means of a bill that, if passed, would compel citizens to maintain a distance of two meters from a police officer. Thus, the goal of “improving service to the citizen,” according to the work plan, will be met by keeping police officers distant from citizens. That also includes improving the mechanism for remote submission of complaints.
Indeed, just recently we saw a concrete example of how the police are distancing themselves from the public. The internet celebrity Gal Gvaram went to a police station to submit a complaint about sexual harassment. She was treated disdainfully and it was suggested to her that she file her complaint online.
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The Israel Police 2021 seems to be disconnecting from the public because it has lost its trust in the public, and with the goal of instilling “Respect for the Police Officer” it is actually declaring war back on the public: “You have no trust in us? Fine, but under the law give us respect or you’ll be arrested.”
Police drag a protester during an anti-Netanyahu protest in Jerusalem last April.
Ohad Zwigenberg
Good impression
Some police personnel may view this article as an attack on them, which is a shame. I actually do not share the anger, hatred and lack of trust felt by many toward the Israel Police. As a rank-and-file citizen, and also in professional encounters, my impression from meetings with police officers is that almost all of them, at all levels, are good people who want to do good. When police disperse demonstrators who have blocked a street, the demonstrators are angry at them. But they are doing their job, which is a hard one, so that others will be able to drive on the street. They are committed to helping, and try to do so wholeheartedly.
I’m certain that senior police officers who may read here about the police’s declaration of war on the public will say they do not want war. But that is still the impression of the general public, who, studies show, continue to lose trust in the police. The disparity between the intentions of good and committed police personnel and the public’s distrust was summed up by Danino a decade ago: “It is here that the gap lies between the quality of the Israel Police and the way the police are perceived by the Israeli public. Each of us, commanders and police officers, is familiar with the feeling of frustration generated by this disparity.”
We need to remember that the crisis of trust also has reasons not directly related to the police. With the acute social and political polarization between different population groups in Israeli society, and between them and the establishment, the police find themselves in the middle, being accused by all sides of doing them injury and supporting their rivals. The police have become the ultimate punching bag. Society’s internal ailments are projected on to them: its personnel are poised there, between the adversaries, in almost impossible conditions.
But even so, one cannot help wondering what role the police played in their failure to acquire the public’s trust during the past decade? The answer turns out to be simple: despite the resolute directive from high in the ranks, the effort remained secondary. And to explain that, we need to resort to a brief theoretical section, whose point was exemplified brilliantly by the two police officers who hoisted the demonstrator we encountered at the top.
At the bottom line, the activity of the police is based on two modes of operation. One, which is well known, is “force and deterrence.” The police are entitled to use this important mode so that people like us won’t need to walk around with bodyguards. The second mode of operation, less well known to the public, is “trust-building dialogue and actions.” And even though it’s mentioned second here, it’s far from being secondary.
This mode emphasizes the contribution of law-abiding citizens to the success of the police, in correlation with the degree of trust they place in the police and the legitimacy they give to police activity. In the Western world, there is a growing realization that the more the use of “force and deterrence” is reduced and “trust building” is augmented, the more the operational effectiveness of the police, which is fundamentally based on the country’s normative citizens, will increase. Thus, when a police officer generated trust within a demonstrator who was being bodily moved, the latter was more likely to cooperate. A second officer, who used threats as a means of deterrence, almost brought about a superfluous arrest which would have wasted police resources unnecessarily.
During the past decade, the community police forces were expanded, and community-oriented activities were carried out. The police discourse emphasized the need to make provision of service to law-abiding citizens a priority. But in the end, despite the commissioner’s directive, the ultimate outstanding police officer is the one who arrests suspects while endangering himself, a hero of the force-and-deterrence approach. There were no success indicators or medals for police personnel whose contribution to law enforcement was highly significant, by creating trust.
Police and protesters in Jaffa run for cover during a rocket siren last May.
Hadas Parush
The weekly team workshops held in the police stations were titled “Force Building,” and training courses at all levels placed very little emphasis on the operational skills needed to create trust. Police referred to the opposite of “force and deterrence” with such unflattering terms as “making yourself nice,” “refraining from contact” and “forgoing law enforcement.” In practice, with proper training, the police would understand that the alternative to “force and deterrence” is striving for trust-building contact, and doesn’t entail forgoing the law and its enforcement.
Starting in 2019, the police set as their principal effort for the coming years “the struggle against crime and violence in Arab society.” The plans and recommendations that have been presented to date (both by a government-appointed committee of ministry directors-general and by the police) have focused on “force and deterrence.” Drones, undercover forces posing as Arabs, special ops units and Border Police armed with truncheons will do battle against crime with the aid of sophisticated technological gadgets.
From past experience and a modicum of common sense, it’s quite clear that this is unlikely to work and that it will end with mutual recriminations between the police and Arab society. Because, on the one hand the majority of the Arab public wants crime eradicated so that it can feel safe, hence the public’s anger at the absence of police in many Arab communities. On the other hand, when the process of eradicating crime is expressed in daily harassment of law-abiding citizens as potential suspects, simply because they were walking in the street, or were invited to a wedding that was halted, they will be furious at the activity of the police in their community.
It follows that a process that rests largely on “force and deterrence” will fail and will spur public criticism of law-abiding citizens who desired its success. In order to succeed, the gist of the process needs to be based on confidence-building dialogue and activity with the entire normative community, with the elements of force and deterrence relegated to the background.
‘Hamas bastion’
One could say that all this is well and good for academic articles, or maybe that it works with police forces elsewhere. But where does one get the chutzpah to claim that it can work here? What’s fascinating is that the proof comes from the Israel Police itself. And not just from regular work by the police, but from work the police are doing with the people of Arab East Jerusalem. And not just anywhere in East Jerusalem, but in the Shoafat refugee camp and the village of Sur Baher. (Until then the police did not enter Shoafat camp, which lies on the other side of the separation fence, without well-protected forces; while Sur Baher is a poor and neglected neighborhood with a complex social dynamic, and has been tagged in the past by the Shin Bet security service as a “Hamas bastion.”)
As Jerusalem chief of police, Yoram Halevy established two small police teams, one for the Shoafat camp and the other for Sur Baher. Before stepping down, in 2019, he talked about this extensively with a group of researchers and activists from Jerusalem – though we already knew many details from conversations with residents of the two communities involved. The task of the police in these teams was mainly – almost 100 percent of the time – to build trust. They would approach people at the checkpoint at the entrance to the camp, or in stores in Sur Baher, and ask them, “How can we help you?”
It was absolutely revolutionary. When was the last time you encountered a police officer on the street who asked you a question like that? And then the police personnel tried, and frequently succeeded, to make those wishes come true, particularly in matters that were within their direct jurisdiction.
Police in Jerusalem’s Old City last month.
Emil Salman
It begin by tacking simple but very significant issues – transportation problems at the entrance to the refugee camp or village. Afterward, at the residents’ request, they removed abandoned bodies of cars, from behind which criminals sold drugs, and they arrested the drug dealers, whom residents pointed out. In Shoafat camp, one of the high points was the clearing away of stores that illegally blocked the main street in the refugee camp: Municipal bulldozers demolished structures in the heart of the neighborhood, and the forces who carried out the work encountered no violence.
In both places, the teams of police officers became viewed as a permanent address to turn to in cases of domestic violence. In local Facebook groups the regular term for the police, “occupation forces,” was sometimes replaced by the neutral “the police” as a gesture to the emerging trust. These teams were able to resolve policing challenges that had lacked an effective response for years by making “trust building” the hub of their activity. And it needs to be made clear that “force and deterrence” remained in the background: when they had to, on rare occasions, these same police officers would exercise deterrence and force and make arrests – they were police in every respect.
In the Old City of Jerusalem, too, in the course of my professional work with civil society there, I met police personnel who devote much of their time to building relations of trust with residents of all religions. In many cases, their work has increased significantly the effectiveness of police activity in one of the world’s most volatile locales. As part of this approach, a small police post was established on Mount Zion, and its personnel, patrol officers in every respect, focused on forging relations of trust between the yeshivas and churches there, which had been at odds to the point of attempted murder. Within a short time, these patrol officers had become a meaningful part of an atmosphere in which trust developed not only between them and the inhabitants of Mount Zion, but also among the locals themselves.
So perhaps before the solution to “violence in Arab society” is entrusted to drones and Jewish troops disguised as Arabs, it should be noted that 90 percent of the effort needs to be of the sort that the Jerusalem District displayed: trust building and then more trust building. Perhaps that would have prevented the occurrence of the serious event last June in the Galilee town of Deir al-Assad, when civilians and police were wounded and police vehicles were torched after police entered a wedding party there in the wake of traditional celebratory gunfire. It’s clear to all of us that the public criticism of the police’s aggressive and insensitive actions in Deir al-Assad contributed neither to law enforcement there nor to the prevention of shooting into the air at future weddings.
By comparison, people in Sur Baher described cases in which a pair of police officers, forgoing their standard body armor, arrived at a similar event and dealt with it well, using the tools of the trust they had acquired over time. They accomplished this without having to summon the whole district, and with the positive effect of preventing gunfire at the next wedding, too.
The same applies to work with both Haredi communities and with communities of Ethiopian descent – among the latter, mistrust of the police is perhaps particularly strong. Of course, it also applies with “privileged” individuals such as Noya Rimalt, a University of Haifa law professor, who recounted recently in Haaretz (in Hebrew) her personal experience when a police officer arrived at her apartment in the wake of a complaint about noise coming from a party. While he could easily have forged relations of trust with her and solved the problem quickly, he instead opted for the force-and-deterrence approach – and handcuffed Rimalt roughly on the floor. She summed up: “In the meantime, it’s best to lock the door well and not open it to a police officer… The children should be warned, too.”
I know that the police will say: “Correct, alongside force and deterrence we are also doing a great deal to gain the trust of the public.” And I say: On the contrary, that is exactly what did not work for you over the course of an entire decade. The principal mission for the police in Israel of 2021 and onward needs to be the building of trust with the public and working jointly with it on improving obedience of the law and law enforcement. And alongside that, and only alongside, the police should also maintain force and deterrence with truncheons and drones. That’s the whole point.
Hagai Agmon-Snir was the founder of the Jerusalem Intercultural Center, and directed it from 1999 to 2021.
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