Mayors meet senior police officers after night of deadly violence in Arab community

Mayors hold an emergency meeting this morning with the senior police brass, including the force’s chief, to “address the rising violence in Arab society,” police say.

The meeting takes place after four Arab citizens were killed last night, one of them by a police officer.

“This is a shared fate. The engineer, the doctor, the teacher, everyone wants to return home safely. It is absurd that this is our only request right now,” says Sakhnin Mayor Mazen Ghnaim, who chairs the Federation of Arab Local Authorities, to participants.

Ghnaim is meeting with officers in Tel Aviv alongside Modiin Mayor Haim Bibas, who represents Israeli municipalities as chairman of the Federation of Local Authorities.

During the meeting, Bibas decries the violence as “terrorism” and says he appealed to the prime minister, urging him to involve the Shin Bet in cracking down on criminal organizations.

Over 100 other mayors are present at the meeting, police say, in which participants have discussed upping law enforcement’s presence at “friction points,” launching national operations to seize illegal weapons, and expanding police’s technological capabilities.

Chief Commissioner Danny Levy says police are doing all they can to combat violent crime and demands officers be granted the “necessary technological tools,” referring to a bill that would allow police to wiretap, hack, and use spyware against certain suspects.

He also urges cooperation from other agencies, including the State Attorney’s Office and court system, which police in the past have accused of not doing enough to prosecute and keep suspects in custody.