On Tuesday, the Knesset passed a bill repealing the British Mandate-era prohibition on loitering, a law which critics say has been used to justify overpolicing of minorities. Lawmaker Moshe Solomon of the Religious Zionism party, one of the few members of Knesset of Ethiopian descent, sponsored the bill.
Solomon told Davar he has personal experience with overpolicing, recalling one encounter with an officer after purchasing a new car. “The officer asked if the car was mine,” Solomon said. “I asked him, ‘Why do you ask?’ He responded, ‘I’m asking.’ I smiled and chucked. The essence of the question was problematic, because I’m of Ethiopian descent, because from his perspective we only have stolen cars.”
He said he was able to convince the officer of his innocence fairly quickly in that circumstance but noted that people of Ethiopian descent “can get into situations.”
“The police eventually used the law to arrest anyone who looked suspicious—Ethiopians, ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Arabs—despite them being ordinary citizens,” Solomon said. “Now we’ve repealed it, and therefore an officer can’t arrest just any youngster or any person.”
A 2019 survey found that only 13% of Israelis of Ethiopian descent reported trusting in the police, compared to 56% of all Israelis. Multiple examples of high-profile police violence against Israelis of Ethiopian descent, including two police killings of Ethiopian men in 2019, have increased tensions between the community and the police.
According to the Knesset’s information and research center, 84 criminal cases of loitering were opened between 2010 and 2019, 42 of which led to an arrest. Solomon noted that those statistics don’t reveal the full effects of anti-loitering policy. “There are thousands of people who have had an intervention with an officer, who were burned by it. Those young people are living in fear,” he said.
The text of the repealed law banned loitering “on or near courtyards or on the road or in or around them, or in a public place, at a time and under circumstances that lead to the conclusion that one is there for a prohibited or improper purpose.” Numerous previous attempts to repeal the law, which predates the establishment of the state of Israel, were unsuccessful.
“I think it’s a matter of timing,” Solomon said to explain his eventual success in repealing the law “The bill passed unanimously, without objections.”
This article was translated from Hebrew by Leah Schwartz.
