Summary
Amendment No. 5 (2016) to the Authorities for Maintaining Public Security Law 5765-2005, expanding police power to stop and frisk on suspicion of an impending violent offence, with an expired temporary provision for declared stop-and-frisk areas, which Adalah’s Discriminatory Laws Database presents as granting police complete discretion that leaves Palestinian citizens vulnerable on racial identity (Discriminatory Laws Database, lines 769-855).
Details
- New s.3B(1): “If a police officer has a reasonable suspicion that a person is about to commit a violent offense against another [person], he may conduct a search of the person’s body to check whether he is carrying an illegal weapon”; reasonable suspicion may arise from, among other factors, violent behaviour in a public place, including verbal violence or threats, or behaviour otherwise threatening or frightening. Under s.3B(2) the authority applies to each of a group of persons who joined together where the suspicion arises for them (lines 788-792). Previously a frisk required reasonable suspicion of illegally carrying a weapon (line 782).
- Temporary s.6B, expired 31 December 2017 and not renewed to the entry’s date: a district commander could declare an area of real concern of hostile terrorist activity in which any person could be body-searched for an unlawfully carried firearm without s.3B suspicion; declarations specified area and duration of at most 21 days, extendable in periods of up to 21 days, extensions beyond two months requiring the Police Commissioner’s approval (lines 794-798).
- Adalah’s figures: from 2011-2015, 60% of police arrests were of “non-Jewish” citizens and residents while Palestinian citizens are around 20% of the population; in the May 2021 mass arrests more than 90% were Palestinian citizens and East Jerusalem residents; and of 55 criminal incitement cases opened from 1 January 2018 to 1 January 2022 in which indictments were filed, only 6 (11%) were against Jewish Israelis (lines 808-812).
- The entry gives the killing of Mussa Hassouna, an unarmed 31-year-old Palestinian citizen shot dead in Lod (Lydd) in May 2021, whose five armed Jewish Israeli suspects were released in under three days and cleared after what the entry calls a negligent, flawed investigation, and records a three-day stop-and-frisk area declaration during Eid al-Fitr along the coast between Herzliya and Bat Yam, where many Palestinians congregate, from the Public Security Minister’s information to the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee (lines 814-816). The entry dates Adalah’s press release on the clearing of the Hassouna suspects to 30 November 2011, although the killing was in May 2021; recorded as printed on the source page (line 838).
Related pages
Discriminatory Laws Database, Adalah, Counter-Terrorism Law, 5776-2016, East Jerusalem