There is no question that organized crime in Israel’s Arab society has become one of the gravest domestic crises the country has ever faced.

Hundreds of people have been murdered in recent years—nearly a thousand since the current government took office. Criminal organizations have entrenched themselves in entire communities. Families live under constant fear. For years, the State of Israel has failed in its most fundamental obligation: protecting the lives and personal security of its own citizens.

Precisely because this crisis is so severe, the government’s reported intention to place the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) at the center of the fight against organized crime is one of the most dangerous public policy initiatives it has advanced in recent years.

This is because  this proposal is not fundamentally about policing, but about citizenship. For the first time in decades, Israel would be assigning responsibility for addressing the principal civilian crisis affecting one national minority not to the police, but to the country’s domestic security service. That is far more than an administrative decision and  amounts to a de facto reclassification of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

A community that should be protected through ordinary civilian institutions would instead be placed under the authority of an agency whose statutory mission is to defend the state against terrorism, espionage, subversion, and threats to the democratic order. In constitutional terms, this represents a strategic downgrading of the civic status of Israel’s Palestinian minority.

Organized crime, however brutal and deadly, is not terrorism. Crime syndicates seek money, power, and control. They are no different in that respect from the Italian mafia, the Mexican cartels, or organized crime groups in the United States. They are not attempting to redraw borders or advance an ideological cause.

That distinction is fundamental because democracies deliberately separate criminal law enforcement........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)