Under the Guise of Crime Fighting: The Occupation Cuts Half a Billion Shekels from Arab Community Budgets for the "Shabak"

SadaNews: The Israeli occupation government intends to cut more than half a billion shekels from the budgets previously allocated under the government plan 550. This plan was adopted by the previous occupation government to reduce the accumulated gaps within the Arab community in vital sectors including education, health, welfare, services, and infrastructure, in addition to supporting the Arab local authorities. According to the new approach, this money will be transferred to the Israel Security Agency (Shabak) under the pretext of involving the agency in efforts to combat rampant crime within the Arab community, instead of being spent on the developmental and service areas for which it was originally allocated.

The occupation government's secretary, Yossi Fox, announced through a joint statement issued by the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir and the Minister of Social Equality Mai Golan, that the Shabak will receive a designated budget of half a billion shekels for this purpose.

These funds specifically come from the allocations of plan 550, the executive responsibilities of which currently fall under the Ministry of Social Equality headed by Golan. The amounts will be transferred from several government ministries through cuts from that restrictive decision.

The statement indicates that the total budget directed to the Shabak and the police together will reach 567 million shekels, and this official plan is set to be presented to the Israeli government for approval during its weekly session next Sunday.

This step, which effectively transforms civilian allocations for the Arab community into security and police apparatuses, comes amid a complete absence of any comprehensive and integrated government plan capable of confronting crime in Arab towns, alongside the continued failure of the police and Israeli authorities to decode murder crimes and pursue organized crime organizations.

Instead of structural treatment, there is a push to involve an intelligence agency in the specifics of the Arab community and to address the crisis from a purely security perspective. This decision represents a dangerous shift in managing the crime file, as it does not provide any new or additional budgets for a comprehensive national anti-crime plan; rather, it relies on nibbling away at the Arab community's budgets and transferring them to a security agency that traditionally deals with Arab citizens from an intelligence and purely security angle.