Government okays Shin Bet to fight crime in Arab society, sparking rights concerns

Some half a billion shekels to be diverted from community development plan and given to security agency, police to take on organized crime; rights groups pan move as discriminatory

The government on Wednesday approved a plan for the Shin Bet security agency to work against the rampant violent crime in the Arab Israeli community, which has seen homicide rates soar in recent years.

The move, which will see hundreds of millions of shekels diverted from community development plans to fund enforcement, drew immediate condemnation from rights groups, which warned it was discriminatory and would deepen inequality between Jews and Arab citizens of Israel.

The plan was proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Social Equality Minister May Golan and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Netanyahu described it as “dramatic news and a significant step” in the battle against organized crime.

“Combining the intelligence, operational and technological abilities of the Shin Bet with Israel Police actions, and the general enforcement bodies, will enable applying the best tools available to the country” to stop organized crime leaders, damage their infrastructure, and “restore personal security to citizens,” the prime minister said in a joint statement with Golan and Ben Gvir.

“We won’t accept a situation of violence, extortion and murder on the streets,” Netanyahu said.

Funds will be diverted from a five-year NIS 30 billion ($8.3 billion) program, dubbed the 550 Plan, created in 2021 under the short-lived Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid-led government and designed to bring Arab communities on par with Jewish counterparts in areas such as housing, policing, and economic development after decades of neglect.

Golan said that under the new program, “instead of public money strengthening crime organizations, it will strengthen the Shin Bet and the police in the campaign against them.”

“Tremendous news for Israeli citizens, bitter news for crime organizations,” declared Ben Gvir, the far-right minister in charge of police, who has been accused of not doing enough to curb the violence that has already taken the lives of 156 members of the Arab community since the beginning of the year.

Some NIS 497 million ($166.4 million) out of the 550 Plan will be allocated for the national campaign against organized crime in the Arab community. NIS 345 million ($115.5 million) will be allocated to the Shin Bet to set up a dedicated unit on drugs and weapons smuggling and to improve operational intelligence means. Another NIS 132.4 million ($44.2 million) will go to the Israel Police to set up a national unit dedicated to fighting crime in the Arab community, and the Shin Bet will get a budget for an additional 130 staff.

The Abraham Initiatives, an anti-violence watchdog that focuses on the Arab community, panned the development.

“This is not a campaign against crime, it is turning citizens into a security threat,” it said in a statement. “Crime is not terror. Instead of a functional police force, investigations, and civilian prevention, the government is choosing to weaken Arab society and harm democracy.”

Lawyers from The Association for Citizen Rights in Israel said that involving the Shin Bet would “stray from [the agency’s] authority and is expected to lead to serious harm to the basic rights of the entire Arab public.”

They noted that organized crime in the Jewish community is dealt with by police using regular crime-fighting tools.

Transferring funding to the Shin Bet, “which is not authorized to act in the field of criminal enforcement… will lead to serious harm to human rights, will deepen the lack of equality, and harm the basic principles of democracy,” the lawyers said.

The Mossawa Center, the Advocacy Center for Arab citizens of Israel, said in a statement that the plan will divert funds away from projects for at-risk youth, vocational training for young people, establishing industrial zones, improving accessibility for public transportation, and housing planning.

“Minister May Golan again proves she is not fit for the role of social equality minister when she acts to deepen discrimination instead of advancing equality,” it said.

An unnamed government source told the Ynet outlet that the Shin Bet will not be involved in dealing directly with crime organizations, but rather will focus on smuggling and trade in illegal weapons.

“It is clear that smuggled weapons go to crime organizations, but that is a narrow niche,” the source said, and stressed that the Shin Bet will not replace police.

Aside from rights groups, the move also faced opposition from government ministries, including a legal opinion from within the Social Equality Ministry, which raised objections relating to diverting the funding, Ynet said.

The opinion noted that the Justice Ministry was not consulted and that without allocating funds also to prosecution authorities, the new move could create “structural imbalances and ‘bottlenecks'” while impacting the efficiency of the enforcement system.

According to the outlet, the Labor Ministry opposed the plan for diverting funds from the 550 plan that were intended to improve employment in the Arab community, while there were additional objections from the Culture and Sports Ministry due to projects it is running.

Former Shin Bet head Ronen Bar had resisted the government’s pressure to involve the internal security agency in the fight against deadly Arab crime, warning that its interference in investigations of citizens in criminal matters could be a slippery slope. The Shin Bet is largely focused on matters of national security, not internal criminal affairs.

Current Shin Bet chief David Zini has been more amenable, according to Hebrew media reports.

Last year was the deadliest on record for Arab society in Israel, as the community mourned 252 people slain in violent criminal circumstances. The vast majority of Arab community homicides went unsolved in 2025, with police managing to crack just 10 percent of cases, according to the Abraham Initiative. The homicide rate in Arab society doubled in 2023 and continued to rise in the years following, save for a short dip in 2024, before reaching a new peak in 2025.

The massive rise, which coincided with the start of Ben Gvir’s term as national security minister, has alarmed Arab community leaders, many of whom attribute the sharp rise to ineffectiveness — if not outright negligence — of law enforcement.

Police, for their part, have claimed that they are doing all they can to combat violent crime. Senior officers, including police chief Danny Levy, have placed blame on state prosecutors and the court system and, in other instances, have said that officers lack the technological means to collect evidence efficiently.