Though quiet publicly, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) is behind-the-scenes vehemently opposed to being drawn deeper into policing internal Israeli Arab criminal violence.
Why?
In early 2020, the government brought the Shin Bet in to track Israeli citizens who were infected with the coronavirus. While this may seem like ancient history now, it shrunk the barrier between the agency’s standard role and proposals to expand its reach.
The next turning point was the May 2021 Gaza conflict – Guardian of the Walls – which led to violent riots and disorder in a number of Israel’s mixed cities. This led the political class at the time to call on the Shin Bet to get involved, particularly with violent acts that may have been rooted in nationalistic tendencies.
On the one hand, the idea was to bring to bear its powerful resources and unique technological and human spying capabilities to prevent a recurrence.
But on the other hand, all parties involved wanted to keep the agency primarily focused on its main mission of preventing external terrorists from penetrating the country and striking it internally.
How did the elite homeland security agency draw the line?
It tried to stay out of the vast majority of internal Israeli-Arab violence, while getting involved when a bomb was placed in a Health Ministry facility, when there was gunfire against the home of a top Israeli Arab police official and assisting in busting cells that robbed weapons from IDF bases – in other words, in specific cases.
Just last week, the Shin Bet proved critical in tracking down and catching criminals who stole around 25,000 bullets.
Then why is it so opposed?
If the agency’s work pays off, why is it so opposed?
The Jerusalem Post has learned that the main reason is resources; it is one thing to move a small team and a small volume of technological resources from the all-important fight against external terror to dealing with some isolated crime issues that could overlap with nationalist, anti-Israel ideological problems.
However, if the Shin Bet made this move on a systematic level across the country, it would leave a huge drain of human and technological resources from combating terror.
The agency has a large budget and a dedicated service, but the budget and human resources is still tiny compared to the giant national police force or the even larger IDF.
It is used as a boutique agency to deal with targeted, specific issues of Palestinian terrorism emanating from the West Bank and Gaza; from Lebanon and Syria; in very rare, extremely volatile cases within Israel; and from distant puppeteers in Tehran and Ankara.
Much of the counter-terror work it does on the ground involves significant support from the IDF and the police.
Besides the limited human resources, technology and budget, there is also the question of focus – the more the agency’s teams move to focusing on Israeli Arab crime, the more the mentality, strategy and tactics for addressing crime will dominate the Shin Bet’s corridors and the agency’s very DNA. This is a different phenomenon from fighting terror and, at some point, there are concerns that it will downgrade the agency’s counter-terror capabilities in many tangible ways.
Some security officials have also warned against the political class inserting the Shin Bet as a “magic spell” because it actually avoids the hard work of investing in a more serious addressing of the poverty, unemployment and poor education that permeates much of the Arab Israeli sector.
In addition, the agency is concerned that overuse of its classified capabilities is more likely to lead to the exposure of its agents, which will make them less useful and effective in their fight against terror.
For example, during the coronavirus era, the public learned that the Shin Bet’s cell phone tracking tool often has trouble with certain three dimensional issues, like discerning between the different floors of a building. This came to light when the agency wrongly thought certain citizens had come into close contact with each other, not realizing they were on different floors, though they were technically within two meters of each other.
The better the Shin Bet gets at fighting crime, the worse it will get at fighting terror. And as bad as crime has become, terror is still a far greater problem.