The police commissioner’s recent admission is a deeply unsettling moment of truth – yet one that surprises no one who lives the reality on the ground. When he calls for “legal courage” and laments the lack of technological tools for intelligence-gathering, he is effectively raising a white flag over the existing working methods of the Israel Police.
The commissioner says honestly: “I have no tools.” The problem is that while the system weeps over the absence of surveillance software, the streets of the Negev, Lod, and Arab society as a whole are burning with bloodshed.
At the Rippman Institute, we have been knocking on government office doors for four years. We submitted detailed work plans, mapped risk zones, and warned time and again: governance is not an abstract academic concept – it is a basic existential necessity. Yet every time the system fails to provide security to its citizens, it returns to the same familiar and worn refrain: “Give us technological tools.”
With all due respect to technology, and despite the clear need to restore intelligence-gathering capabilities to the police, it is worth remembering one painful lesson from Israel’s recent history: on October 7, we had the most advanced technological tools in the world. We had surveillance over every meter, sensors on every fence, and algorithms capable of detecting the movement of an ant. All of this did not prevent the disaster.
Salvation will not come only from the keyboard or the screen: it will come from a dramatic change in operational doctrine and from a physical presence on the ground.
Broadening the fight against organized crime
The legal and policing system is stuck in a paradigm of “classic criminal enforcement” – one that tries to extract evidence with delicate legal tweezers from within a sea of escalating crime. But we are no longer dealing with a routine criminal event: We are in a national emergency.
When illegal weapons circulate in enormous quantities in cities and villages, and organized crime behaves like an army in every sense, the response must move into the security arena.
The model we proposed to the government – the “polygons” model – requires a profound conceptual shift. Instead of waiting for concrete intelligence about a single house, information that often arrives too late or is insufficient to obtain a search warrant, the state must define broad search zones.
Based on comprehensive intelligence assessments, the state must allow security forces to operate across entire geographic cells where armed activity or weapons stockpiles are known to exist. This is not a step against law-abiding populations; it is a necessary step in favor of life itself. When illegal weapons threaten the streets, the entire space becomes a combat zone.
In addition, there is no avoiding the integration of the capabilities of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) into this effort. The use of administrative detention is undoubtedly an extreme measure, but it is necessary when dealing with “ticking bombs” spreading fear through our streets.
I am fully aware of the criticism regarding harm to civil rights, but in the current balance of terror, the right to life precedes all other rights. Citizens who cannot safely leave home, or whose children are exposed to stray gunfire, do not enjoy civil rights – they live under the rule of gang terror.
The commissioner demands legal courage? He is absolutely right. But legal courage does not mean merely approving the use of one spyware program or another. Legal courage means understanding that we are in an emergency requiring dramatic temporary legislation.
The ultimate responsibility lies with the government. Do not wait for technology to save you from a bleeding reality.
Technology is only an auxiliary tool; it is not a strategy. The strategy must be the restoration of sovereignty and governance through force, determination, and the targeted use of emergency powers – here and now.
The weapons stockpiles in Rahat and Arraba will ultimately harm their Jewish neighbors in the Negev as well.
Uncontrolled weapons, by their nature, spread beyond control and leak everywhere. Those who do not treat crime as terrorism today will encounter it as an organized army tomorrow. The time has come to stop asking for more tools – and to begin using the sovereign power the state already possesses.
The writer is head of the Rifman Institute for Negev Development, and a former director-general of the Construction and Housing Ministry and the Ministry for Community Strengthening and Advancement.