Police relations with Arabs & Jews in Israel (original) (raw)

Remarkably little research has been conducted on police relations with citizens in Israel compared with other societies that are deeply divided along ethnic lines. This paper examines the views of Arabs and Jews regarding several key aspects of policing in Israel. The fi ndings indicate, fi rst, that Arabs are consistently more critical of the police than Jews, and these ethnic differences persist net of the infl uence of other variables. Second, in addition to the role played by ethnicity in explaining public assessments of the police, a number of other variables infl uence such attitudes. The results are interpreted within the context of the divided society model of policing, which originated in research on other ethnically polarized societies. Policing Ethnically Divided Societies Ethnic minorities and the police have troubled relations in many societies (Antonopoulos 2003 ; Bowling and Phillips 2003), but, in deeply divided societies , such confl icts are especially deep-rooted. These societies are characterized by extreme polarization along ethnic lines, and policing is organized fi rst and foremost ' for the defense of a sectarian regime and the maintenance of a social order based on institutionalized inequality between dominant and subordinate communal groups ' (Weitzer 1995: 5). This model of policing has the following features: (1) police policies or practices are institutionally biased against members of the subordinate minority group; (2) over-representation of the dominant ethnic group within the police force, especially in the top ranks; (3) polit-icization of the police force and police repression of the regime's opponents; (4) dual responsibility for ordinary crime control and internal security; (5) legal powers giving police great latitude in their control of the minority population, including the use of force; (6) an absence of effective mechanisms of accountability; and (7) confl icting ori-entations to the police among the subordinate group and dominant groups: on key issues of legitimacy, trust, confi dence and support, the dominant group is a champion of the police and the subordinate group is largely estranged from the police (Weitzer 1995: 3 – 9; see also Brewer 1990 ; 1991). Some of these factors are present, in varying degrees, in many nations, but what distinguishes deeply divided societies is their magnitude and combination — constituting a distinctive policing model (Brewer 1990). In divided societies, citizens ' relations with the police are shaped, in large part, by their allegiance to or alienation from the state — a factor that is less prominent in shaping perceptions of the police in more integrated societies, where the state enjoys diffuse legitimacy and is not an object of fundamental contention (Marenin 1985). In other words, it is not just what the police do, but also what police represent to people. In ethnically divided societies, the symbolic status of the police force, as pillars of state domination over ethnic