The Shin Bet security agency must be kept out of efforts to rein in crime in the Arab sector. As a security agency whose job is to prevent acts of terror, the Shin Bet employs extreme means that harm individual rights and are not suited for investigating crimes. In addition, defining Shin Bet activity as aimed at Arab Israeli citizens is highly problematic from a moral, legal, constitutional, and democratic perspective. This phenomenon has the potential to spread throughout Israel as authorities will always want to declare war on some form of crime.

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Two weeks have passed, and the police are already asking for authorization for administrative detentions. Administrative detention is a mandatory and draconian means that has no place in a democracy. If there is evidence of a criminal violation, the State Attorney's Office must file an indictment and submit its decision to the authorized court. No one should be imprisoned without a trial. The administrative detainee does not know the factual basis for their arrest, nor the allegations nor the evidence that will be used against them. If there is evidence, it is kept under wraps. The uncertain and helpless situation of Josef K in Franz Kafka's book "The Trial" serves to illustrate their situation. That is why the test laid out by the Supreme Court is "near certainty state security or the public will be harmed" absent the administrative detention. This is an undemocratic means that severely harm human rights. No wonder the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who was deeply committed to democracy, opposed the use of administrative detention on citizens.

Furthermore, when the government's authorities to harm civil rights are expanded, even when justified by a specific need for a limited time, experience in Israel and around the world shows us that they remain in place for years. In Israel, the declaration of the state of emergency has remained in place for over 70 years, since 1948. In the US, the broad authorities granted to various bodies following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, many of which unjustifiably remained in place for years because authorities simply found it too difficult to wean themselves off them.

The Israel Police has a huge budget amounting to some 14.5 billion shekels (around $4.5 billion). That should be enough to provide citizens with relative security from physical violence without asking for the Shin Bet's assistance or demanding undemocratic authorities like administrative detention. Will they ask for the military's assistance, including the possible use of its tanks and planes, to deal with crime next?

Without making light of the violence in Arab society, and given the possibility some of this has to do with organized crime, these organizations are no stronger than their counterparts in Jewish society, with whom the police have managed to contend. They certainly aren't more powerful than organizations like the mafia in the US, which did not require the use of undemocratic means either.

All that is needed is proper management, sophistication, the correct division of existing resources, and responsibility. For example, the many millions of shekels invested in the well-resourced investigations into former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the Police Internal Investigations Unit could have been diverted to efforts to increase security for Israel's Arab citizens. Around 1,000 police officers can and should be dispatched to patrol the streets, with each responsible for their own beat. There is, of course, also a need to sufficiently brief officers so that that they act against dangerous violence and do not rush to electrocute people with Taser guns, as they are sometimes wont to do, instead. This is just one example of the many steps that can be taken. If senior police officials believe they are incapable of handling this, instead of asking for the Shin Bet's and the Israel Defense Forces' help and demanding anti-democratic legislation, including administrative detention, they should step aside and make way for more qualified commanders.

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