Israel is moving towards over-policing and increasing its surveillance of the Palestinian population in the premises of 1949-borders under the narrative of security and order.
In the latest measure, the Israeli cabinet approved a proposal on Sunday granting police with what Palestinians see as broad coercion which would allow Israeli forces to freely search homes without a court warrant.
Israeli media said that the forces would raid any house, “if they think they can find a suspect or evidence related to a serious crime.”
The bill was proposed by minister Gideon Saar. It comes after the earlier governmental decision last month that ordered to deploy the internal Israeli intelligence service Shabak/Shin Bet in Palestinian towns and villages as part of its “national fight against crime”.
With the cabinet’s support, the bill will be voted on in the Israeli parliament – the Knesset – before becoming a law. It is not yet clear whether the proposal will get a majority vote.
The Founder and Director of Adalah, the main Palestinian legal defense organization inside Israel, Hassan Jabareen said that the bill would give the police a pretext to search any Palestinian home.
Hasan said, “In practice, they will be able to go into the majority of Arab homes, because in every [Arab] neighborhood and town, there are shootings and killings. It’s enough for them to be suspicious to do so.”
He said that it means there would be “no judicial supervision” over the operation of entering into homes, which “strips homes of their sanctity”.
Hassan continued, “This will allow the police to even enter homes and use them for maneuvering, for example, if they are suspicious of the house next door.”
“We are going from under-policing to over-policing – one extreme to another,” adding the new legislation could be used to “terrorize people”, particularly during times of protest.
A political writer and former general secretary of the National Democratic Alliance party Awad Abdelfattah said that it created a state of tension for Palestinians.
“It will restrict our freedoms and put us under more surveillance,” he told Al Jazeera from the town of Kawkab near Haifa.
Last week, Israeli officials also charted a plan to allow administrative detention against the community, a policy used by the Israeli occupation army in the West Bank which allows them to detain Palestinians indefinitely without trial or charges.
Homicide in Palestine
During the past decade, the issue of crime and homicides has plagued the Palestinian community inside Israel, referred to as the “1948-occupied territories” or the “occupied interior” by Palestinians.
The number of killings has risen dramatically over the past few years. So far in 2021, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed in homicides, surpassing last year’s total of 97. In 2013, there were 53 killings.
On Monday morning, Salim Hasarmah, 44, was killed in a shooting in the town of al-Bi’neh east of Akka. Less than 24 hours later, 25-year-old Khalil Abu Je’o was killed in Umm al Fahm, northwest of Jenin.
While Israel opened a large number of police stations in and around Palestinian towns during and following the Second Intifada in 2000, shootings have mushroomed during the last decade, with the vast majority of cases going unsolved.
Historic mass protests and confrontations with police broke out in March 2021 in the focal town of Umm al-Fahm, against police indifference, and against what Palestinians say is Israel’s investment in the endurance of crime within the community to weaken it, and collusion with criminal gangs.
Abdelfattah said Israel is using internal violence as a “cheap method” to exert control over Palestinians.
Abdelfattah said, “Internal violence in the ’48-occupied areas is the result of colonial violence and colonial policies that created all the social, cultural and economic conditions to block the path, the horizon, and hope, for Palestinians, until they turn against themselves.”
Rights groups have long documented the struggle of Palestinians in Israel, who number 1.8 million. In addition to Israel’s efforts to suppress their Palestinian identity over the years, the majority live in densely populated towns and with little access to land and resources – most of which were seized during and after 1948 by Jewish settlers.
In 2016, Israeli officials said 90 percent of illegal firearms originated from the army.
