Author: Sohail Hassanein
This article seeks to identify ways in which Israeli laws, police and politicians make Palestinians in Israel to be a security threat. The broader context in which the construction took place (inequality, separation and control) is discussed in this article. The article shows that the major method of the political control is the influential use of laws to criminalize hostility and antagonism, while the police act in order to strengthen its control. Every main law enforcing decision related to this community was made with political considerations in mind. The article also finds that a political crime is whatever the system reacts to as a political crime and the context in which the act takes on a political character. Consequently, the statistical classifications of arrest tell as much about the social construction of events as about what is happening. The figures offer an indication of the changes that have taken place in the population of arrests due to security worries. Visions of Israeli politicians, police and Palestinian leaders, about crime as a security threat, are presented. The article concludes that as long as the Israel-Palestine conflict continues, the cycle of criminalisation of politics and politicisation of criminals will also continue.
Keywords: Crime, politics, Palestinians, control, security, threat.
Sohail Hassanein, Professor of Criminology. Independent Researcher, Palestine. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
