Israel Police

On 26 March, 1998, by Cabinet Committee decision, Israel celebrated Police Day, for it was on that very date fifty years back that the Israel National Police (I.P.) was born. On 26 March 1948, David Ben-Gurion, then head of the Jewish Agency, appointed Yehezkel Sahar, then the Agency's liaison officer with the British Mandatory government for matters of settlements, guards, and policing, to set up a Jewish police force.

The history of the Israel National Police is of one piece with the history of the society and state of Israel: it has had to adapt continually to serve the ever-developing nature and needs of its host society. The four constant themes of its evolution have been --- incessant professionalization, response to communal and societal needs, the changing nature of the service, and the flexibility of structure necessitated by organizational and environmental constraints.

1948-1957 -- The Formative Period

On Friday, 14 May 1948, in the turmoil of a war of independence that was to cost thousands of dead and wounded, the State of Israel came into being. The Declaration of Independence made by the nation's leaders proclaimed the values on which the society and its regime were to stand.

Tens of thousands of refugee-immigrants were already streaming into the country from all corners of the globe. The economy was stretched to near collapse, the security situation was extremely dangerous, but construction and development could not wait. These were the conditions in which the state began to build its institutions.
In effect, the I.P.'s first discussion of strategy had begun six months before the State was declared. Even before the British had started evacuating their forces, the Jewish Agency had feverishly begun setting up working groups to prepare blueprints for the institutions of the state-in-formation. Yehezkel Sahar's team was working group no. 2 and his deputy was Yosef Nakhmias. Two weeks after they had finished their plans, Ben-Gurion stamped them with his approval and ordered Sahar to go ahead and establish a national police force. The date was 26th March. When the State was declared two months later, the first Minister of Police, Bekhor Shalom Shitreet, handed Sahar his letter of appointment as the force's first Commissioner.
The force began by adopting the methods and tools of the Mandatory government --- in training, investigations, forensic work, traffic control, and so on. The uniform, the ranks, standing orders, procedures, discipline and ceremonial, all were taken over from the British. Even some of the police stations moved into the `McTaggart fortresses' from which the Mandatory government had enforced its will.

Between the lines, however, a new wind was blowing. The new policemen felt a sense of mission and a loyalty to their society that their predecessors never had. They volunteered their help in the camps set up for the incoming refugees, they helped erect fortifications, they adopted new settlements. This first period of I.P. history was one of coping with the severest constraints of manpower and resources, with terrorist infiltrations, with public disorder and demonstrations, traffic accidents, a growing crime rate, a black market, and disappearances of children.

In 1953, the Border Guard was set up within the I.P. to combat the problem of infiltrators and patrol the State's frontiers. In 1954, the I.P.'s first Police District came into being, the Central District. During the 1956 Sinai War, some I.P. units (the Border Guard, the Marine Police) were attached to the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.). By 1957, the character of the I.P. was fixed --- it was apolitical, loyal, jealous of its integrity and honesty, and an integral part of its community.

1958-1966 - Specialization

By the new state's second decade, the massive wave of immigration had slackened and the institutional infrastructure was tried and tested. Security on the borders was still precarious and tense. The economic relief brought by huge reparation payments from Germany and the support from Diaspora Jews had passed and given way to economic crisis, which hit the new immigrants hardest and provoked resentment and unrest, demonstrations and strikes.

It was also in this decade that the I.P. shook off the last vestiges of its British appearance: ranks were Hebraicized, officers' hat brims lost their silver braid, and the uniform lost its cross-belts. The super-strict discipline was allowed some relief and at the I.P. Training College military-style drill and exercises were replaced by police studies.

The force responded to a growing demand for its services by improving its structure and skills. It invested more and more in increasing its professionalism and specialist training in all departments. In 1958, it recast its internal division of labor by separating national staff work from field units and reducing the number of Police Districts from five to three (Northern, Tel Aviv, and Southern). Its manpower and materials establishment was codified; its investigations department went over to a proactive crime prevention strategy, beat-policemen made their first appearance, and policewomen were for the first time given operational duties. Juvenile crime units were set up, and in Tel Aviv the Central Unit was created, combining Sub-District investigations departments into one District-wide unit. 1958 also saw the establishment of a Senior Command College and in 1966, in Haifa, the first Junior Officers' College. Police transport and manpower data were computerized. The Forensic Laboratory was upgraded and a mobile scene-of-crime laboratory introduced. In 1964, the Border Guard first began to take soldiers on compulsory military service. In May 1960, Bureau 6 was set up specially to deal with the investigation of Adolph Eichmann's Nazi war crimes and to put him on trial in Israel. In 1965, the Districts' internal structure was overhauled. The end result of this eight-year period of effort was a force much better equipped, trained, and organized to meet the challenges confronting it than it had been eight years before.

1967-1973 - Moving into the Age of Technology

The outcome of the 1967 Six Day War was a considerable increase in the territory ruled by Israel. The end of the economic depression and the beginnings of a boom also raised public morale and introduced feelings of security. A government of national unity was established combining the leading political parties. Societal disparities in achievement and opportunities remained very wide, however, and protest movements,

such as the Black Panthers, made themselves heard and felt. Arab terrorism against Israeli and Jewish targets reached new heights both within Israel and overseas. While the western world showed what its scientists were capable of by landing a man on the moon, Israel too made technological strides in the civilian and military spheres.

With the enlargement of territory to be administered, the I.P. organized itself to provide police services to East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Gaza, Northern Sinai, and the Golan Heights --- territories containing a million Arab inhabitants. The unique character of East Jerusalem, especially, demanded sensitive and vigilant policing. The Border Guard was reorganized and its bases redistributed. In Judea and Samaria, police Sub-Districts and stations were established under the overall command of the Military Governors, manned by both Israeli and local (Arab) policemen. Urban police Sub-Districts were made into Sub-Divisions and the Central Sub-District was formed by amalgamating all the Sub-Divisions of the region.

Technological and scientific advances were absorbed more and more into police work and equipment. Candidates with a university education and ex-army officers were recruited directly to officer-rank positions. Both specialist police work and general administration came to rely more and more on computerized databanks. The I.P.'s research and development capacity was expanded. The forensic laboratories were further upgraded, winning international recognition for their work. Israel began sending advisory police-work delegations to developing countries.

At noon on the Day of Atonement, 1973 (Yom Kippur - the most solemn fast day and Holy Day in the Jewish calendar), the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched frontal attacks on the Sinai and the Golan Heights fronts, aided by contingents of forces from Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Morocco and other Arab countries. 19 days of the bitterest fighting later, on 24 October, the United Nations Security Council declared a bilateral cease-fire. Immediately on the outbreak of war, the I.P. Inspector-General proclaimed a general call-up of all police officers and men to military service and put I.P. operations on a state of emergency footing. This was accomplished rapidly in all departments and at all ranks. After the end of the fighting the I.P. continued to operate on semi-emergency status until the end of the year.

1974 - 1979 -- A Dual-Function Police Force

The Yom Kippur War left the Israel public in shock and torn between opposing political movements. Within a short space of time, three governments came and went. In May 1977, came the great political `revolution' when, for the first time since the founding of the State in 1948, a right-wing party (the Likud) formed the government. It was this government and party which in September 1978 signed a ground-breaking peace agreement with Egypt, marking a turning point in Israel's relations with the Arab world. This did not mean any stop to terrorist attacks on Israel, while, in addition, the northern border towns and settlements were bombarded from Lebanese territory. These events persuaded the government, in April 1974, to hand over responsibility for internal security within Israel proper (i.e. excluding the Administered Territories) to the I.P. and this in turn compelled the I.P. to make wide-ranging organizational changes to accommodate its new responsibilities.

The Civil Guard was set up to mobilize, train, and equip tens of thousands of citizen - volunteers for patrolling neighborhood streets at night. The Border Guard took over the guarding of air- and sea-ports. The I.P. created its Operations Division in 1975 to coordinate and streamline the work of all operational branches. The Special Anti-Terrorist Unit and the Bomb Disposal Division were set up. But public security could not be the I.P.'s only concern.

The growing threat from sophisticated criminals, including white-collar criminals, demanded action on that front, too. All investigation, detective, and intelligence services, forensic and fingerprint sections, and juvenile crime units were amalgamated into a single Investigations and Crime-Fighting Department, headed by a director, with the rank of Assistant Commissioner. The publication of the Shimron Report on Crime in Israel, in 1978, also contributed to altering the I.P.'s approach to crime-fighting. It led directly to the creation of the National Serious Crimes Investigation Unit, the National Fraud Unit, the Internal Investigations Unit, the Headquarters Staff Work Unit, Tel Aviv District's Central (Serious Crimes) Unit, and others.

Thus, the I.P. reformed itself as a dual-function service, bearing responsibility both for internal security and for civilian crime-fighting.

1984 -1990 - Long-Term Planning

During this six-year period, Israeli law was extended to the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsular was returned to Egypt. Nationalist unrest began to take hold more strongly in the Arab population of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Demonstrations, disorders and other breaches of the peace succeeded each other. Arab terrorism also expanded and the government ordered the I.D.F. into Southern Lebanon (Operation Peace for Galilee) to `take out' the bases and headquarters from which attacks on Israel were planned and launched. Internal Israeli politics were marked by the rise of extremist groups using violence to gain their ends.

The economic situation got worse and worse and inflation skyrocketed. Strikes, planned work disruptions, and protest marches over employment conditions multiplied. In 1984, in response to public pressure, another national unity government was formed, commanding a majority of 97 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, and one of its early decisions, in 1985, was to pull I.D.F. forces out of Lebanon.
The I.P. began this period by drawing up a five-year plan (1980-84) (the Tirosh Plan). For the first time in its history, the I.P. conducted a formal analysis of its society's need for police services, drew up forecasts, and laid down clearly drawn policies for each section of its operations. The tasks and objectives for each succeeding year were derived from this long-term plan. In 1981, the I.P. set up its fourth Police District, the Central District, while the Lakhish Sub-District was carved out of the Southern District. New units were created, among them the Community Relations Unit and the Zvulun Unit for policing the sea- and air-ports.

One of the serious challenges that confronted the I.P. was riotous demonstrations by Ultra-Orthodox Jews (against Sabbath desecration and archeological excavation of Jewish graves), by Arabs, and by a range of political movements. The evacuation of protesting residents from the town of Yamit (part of the Sinai Peninsular returned to Egypt under the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement) and the new problem of crime motivated by nationalistic ideologies consumed much police time and resources.

The day of 11 November 1982 brought disaster on the I.P. when its headquarters building in Tyre, Southern Lebanon, was blown-up, killing thirty-four police and Border Guard men. One year later, on 1 November 1983, a building in Tyre housing a police unit was blown up by a terrorist bomb killing seventeen more police and Border Guard men. None of this of course, could stop the I.P. carrying on with its duties in the area.

1985 -1990 - More Technological Advances and a Closer Relationship with the Public

For the second half of the 1980s a government of national unity was in power but this by no means made political and social affairs any quieter or more restrained. In the Knesset, motions of no confidence were presented one after the other and the issues at the center of public debate were battled back and forth with as much heat as ever. 1985 saw an emergency economic plan. Unemployment was spreading all the time and the discontent of the low-income groups was vociferous. The economic downturn was also making them more numerous. After a period of low activity, the rate of immigration began to pick up sharply, especially from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia. In Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, public disorder and disturbances had become routine, but now they began to spread, although on a smaller scale, into the Arab population of East Jerusalem and into Israeli Arab towns. Arab terrorist attacks became more frequent and took many forms --- open attacks in town centers launched for their shock effect, concealed explosive devices, arson, attacks on individual soldiers and civilians, infiltration attempts from the sea.

One of the effects of the 1985 economic emergency plan was to freeze I.P. recruitment. But the demand for policing by no means froze; it continued to climb, so that priorities had to be decided on. The three first priorities were given to the fight against drug abuse and drug trafficking, combating the high accident rate on the roads, and public order in Jerusalem. The I.P. continued to look for useful technological and scientific advances --- forensics, bomb disposal, and intelligence, among others, all benefited from new methodologies and equipment. Another sphere in which it was decided to invest was education for values and professional ethics within the service itself: the aim was to instill into every officer that lapses of integrity and proper behavior would not be tolerated. In general, the service's relationship with its public was reassessed and refurbished. The uniform in military khaki was replaced by one in blue and every officer was issued a lapel name tag.

However, 1986-89 were years of the Intifada (popular uprising by Arab residents of the Administered Territories), of daily fierce rioting and confrontations between stone- and petrol-bomb-throwing crowds and Israeli armed forces. Arab terrorism reached new levels. Again I.P. priorities had to be rearranged. The police forces in Jerusalem and other areas of unrest (the Galilee and the Northern Valleys, and parts of the Central and Southern Districts) were heavily reinforced to maintain order. The extra resources needed for public-order policing could only be taken from the I.P.'s other areas of responsibility, specifically from criminal investigations, intelligence, and training, which suffered more and more from the inevitable order of priorities. Some effort was made to compensate by using the Border Guard and the Civil Guard in regular police work, in addition to their internal security duties.

1990 -1993 - Internal Security and Conventional Policing Duties

In these four years occurred events of great importance, in Israel and the world at large, whose impact was felt on Israel's diplomacy and national security, on its social and economic affairs --- the Temple Mount disturbances in October 1990;

the Gulf War and the bombardment of Israel with Scud missiles in January-February 1991; the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; the Israeli-Arab peace negotiations in Madrid and Washington; the signing of the
Oslo Accords with the Palestinians in 1993; the intensification of the Intifada --- the Gaza Strip incidents, stone and Molotov cocktail throwing, arson, concealed explosive devices, stabbings, shootings of civilians and soldiers.

Also a feature of this same period was a massive wave of immigration from the countries of the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia. Operation Solomon was mounted to bring out Ethiopia's Jews. The general election of July 1992 brought about a second political `revolution' by returning the Labor Party to power under the prime ministership of Yitzhak Rabin. There were conflicts and confrontations with the Jewish settlers of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, as well as with ultra-Orthodox Jews. Increasing unemployment blighted the economy and strikes and go-slows were called in the fight for higher wages. The road accident casualty rate rose even higher. Numerous terrorist cells and organizations were uncovered during 1993 and eventually hundreds of the members of these cells were expelled into Southern Lebanon.

At the beginning of this period, the Intifada intensified and terrorist attacks also became more frequent (in addition there was the bloody violence on the Temple Mount itself between Israeli troops and Moslem worshippers). Once again the I.P. had to reorganize its services and transfer resources from its conventional anti-crime policing to the maintenance of internal public order.

During the Gulf War, the I.P.'s careful training resulted in a smooth change-over to its state of emergency format to deal with the physical and social impact of Iraqi missile attacks on Israel. A new Police District, Jerusalem District, was declared operational, with four police stations. The new District's main task was less to fight crime than to preserve public order. Reinforcements were drafted in from other Districts whenever it looked likely there would be need for them. In January 1991, the Southern District was restructured: its manpower was redistributed; four new police stations were opened, operational command posts were set up to patrol movement across the borders with the Palestinian Autonomous Authority and to prevent the infiltration of terrorists; Civil Guard volunteers were given wider roles in regular police work and in the specialized units; its patrol work was expanded; new neighborhood bases were set up; the scope of its responsibilities was increased both with regard to internal security and conventional crime-fighting. The signing of the Agreement in Principle with the Palestinians necessitated I.P. redeployment in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, in which context the I.P. set up the Judea & Samaria Command Center, under the direct control of the Commissioner of Police.

Efforts continued to improve police officers' working conditions and welfare, Applications for recruitment had risen and the service set out to reevaluate its recruitment, placement, and training system, placing the emphasis on efficient and reliable service to the public, and encouraging ordinary citizens to extend their confidence in, and cooperation with, the police. The Traffic Police came into being to strengthen the fight against the road accident casualty rate, and extra resources, too, were allocated to combating serious crime. The war on the drugs trade was reinforced by creating an Anti-Drugs Unit in the Southern District, specifically to intercept the drugs traffic across the Egyptian border. The I.P.'s Internal Investigations Unit was transferred to the Ministry of Justice. General technological and logistical upgrading could not be neglected and a high point of this effort was the acquisition of two helicopters.

1994 -1998 - Peace Agreements Necessitate Reorganization

International diplomacy kept its place at the top of the national agenda: peace negotiations with the Palestinians continued, though periodically disrupted by suicide terrorist bombings that killed scores of people.
On 25 February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a resident of the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron, shot dead thirty Moslems at prayer in the Machpelah Cave mosque/synagogue in Hebron and wounded tens more --- an act that provoked furious mass disturbances. On 4 May 1994, the Cairo Agreement was signed which, among other provisions, transferred the Gaza Strip and the city of Jericho to Palestinian control as a first step to further territorial concessions. On 26 October the same year, Israel signed a peace agreement with the Kingdom of Jordan, further reinforcing the network of peace arrangements linking the nations of the Middle East. But these peace-making efforts were brutally set back by a succession of devastating terrorist attacks on Israel during 1995 and 1996 (two crowded buses were blown up in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; suicide bombers killed scores at Bet Lid, the Dizengoff shopping center in Tel Aviv, and in Ashkelon). However, the most traumatic happening of all was the murder of the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, on 4 November 1995 as he was leaving a mass peace rally. The assassin was a young Israeli religiously-observant Jew. On 11 April 1996, the Israeli government responded to katyusha rocket attacks on its northern population centers by Hizbullah and other terrorist organizations in Southern Lebanon by again ordering in the I.D.F. (Operation Grapes of Wrath).
In May 1996, Israeli politics were again overturned by the election to power of the right-wing Likud Party led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Towards the end of that year,
after an ancient tunnel running along the outer edge of the Temple Mount was opened for tourism, more mass rioting and violent confrontations broke out in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, distinguished this time by Palestinian police firing on and killing Israeli soldiers and policemen. To meet the new political realities created by the peace agreements with the Palestinians, the I.P. had once more to recast its organization, as well as to pour massive forces into responding to the bloody terrorist attacks inside Israel. I.P. intelligence services were overhauled in an attempt to prevent or disrupt future attacks. The signing of the Oslo Accords necessitated a sixth Police District (the Judea & Samaria District) to better cope with the security and public order requirements in that area. The I.D.F.'s redeployment in the West Bank transferred internal security duties in the Lakhish Sub-District to the I.P. and also made it necessary to create the Shimshon Sub-District. The Border Guard's Southern Command was split into two (South and Tel Aviv & Central) in the interests of more efficient and effective policing. Despite the very heavy burden of security responsibilities, the I.P. had no intention of neglecting its traditional public order and crime-fighting roles (particularly drug trafficking and road accidents). The assassination of the prime minister brought about a joint rethinking of the personal protection of VIPs by the police and the security services. Among the `normal' cases for police attention in this period, were the mutual illegal wiretapping by rival daily newspapers, the violent disturbances caused by the followers of a renegade rabbi, Uzi Meshullam, and the investigation of many heads of local government, suspected of crime and corruption. Early in 1995, the Community Policing Unit was created, whose brief was to make policing more responsive to the needs of the ordinary citizen and to integrate the resources and goals of the police with those of Local Government Authorities and community agencies. The I.P. pursued its long-term policy to improve officers' working conditions and wages. It further upgraded and refined its in-service training system. Recruitment efforts were expanded with the specific purpose of raising the level of candidates for police work. Within the context of bringing the I.P. to Year 2000 levels of organization and logistics, the computerization of the service was extended, particularly into the Manpower Division, and a massive equipment procurement drive was set in motion. Sophisticated, high-performance anti-terrorist and anti-crime equipment and technologies were bought and the relevant officers carefully and thoroughly trained in their use. 1995 saw the creation of the Traffic Administration to coordinate the handling of urban and inter-city road traffic, under the overall control of the Traffic Police. 1996 also saw a strategic planning process launched to lay down guidelines for I.P. work into the near future. Early in 1997, the recommendations of the various working groups received the Commissioner's and the Minister of Public Security's stamp of approval. During 1997, the I.P. faced ever rising crime rates, as well as the continuation of terrorist attacks. The most sensitive case on its books for criminal investigation was the Bar-On Affair, which involved interrogating the prime minister, the minister of justice and many other senior politicians and officials. The chief organizational modifications during this period were the creation of two new departments - the Traffic Department and the Intelligence Department. The purpose of the change was to coordinate widespread operations and to upgrade the methods and technologies employed - the one in the fight against the death toll on the roads and the second in the fight against crime. In the sphere of internal security, responsibility for guarding the borders between Israel proper and the Palestinian Authority was handed over to the Border Guard which had been trained carefully for the new duty. In 1997, the I.P.'s new Code of Ethics was officially introduced. The aim of the Code was to make precisely clear to every serving officer the standards of professionalism and integrity and public service he or she was required to attain and maintain.