Décalage Diplo

DécalageDiplo a rencontré Micky Rosenfeld, porte-parole de la police israélienne, le 7 mars à Paris. Interview en anglais.

DD: Do you talk to your European counterparts?
Since 7 October there has been a increase in international cooperation in Europe, both tactical and strategic.
The police thinking process is changing, attacks are increasingly unexpected in scale and size, European police agencies must think of this, worse incidents could happen in Europe. Much bigger than Bataclan.
Israeli police suggests more tech, more drones , more intel in Europe. Schengen makes movement easy for terrorists; and there is the infiltration through illegal immigration, entrants must be tracked.

DD: Operationally, how is Israel Police organized, and what about the Border Police?

We are the only Police force in the country. No municipal police, we only have local volunteer policing in neighborhoods, as around Jerusalem.
32 000 Regular Police, blue uniform?
and can do infiltrate under cover. and we target houses, and Police is the inner intervention, because we know who is who.
The Border Police is part of Israel Police, 9 000 Border Police, green olive uniform, can have volunteers doing military service, much demand, and many women services; BP do riot control and are first responders and can intervene and patrol around Jerusalem and the Old City.
50pc of our work is community patrolling, we take complaints from all communities.

DD: How do you work with the Army?
It is true that Israel Defense Force has arrest powers, and follows police-style procedures, for example concerning attackers with a knife at 100m: warning shots, then at 20m can shoot in the in legs, etc.
IDF is in charge of border infiltration, police is for any incident inside Israel,
dealing with Judea and Samaria [also designated as the West Bank under pre-1967 terminology], IDF is for Gaza border.
Of course, in Judea and Samaria the IDF works with Palestine Police and Security Forces, mostly at an administrative level; we also have an Israeli police station that keeps a line open with Ramallah.
Aman is military counter-terrorism.

DD: What are the strong points of Israel Police?
Our Police is the most experienced force in world, and could teach other forces about many scenarios and volumes of attack. Israël is sharing its knowledge. Many official visits to Israel since 7 Oct, for instance the head of US Border Patrol visited. We deal with explosive devices, booby-traps inside destroyed homes, and more.
Police patrol Judea and Samaria, and let Palestinians into Israël.
For Ramadan: there will be no age limits at moment on Temple Mount [Haram al Sharif in Arab usage], we hope there will be quiet and no incitement from Hamas or whoever.
Remember, terrorists have an ideology which recommends killing as many Israelis as possible. We are forced to enter Jenin.
Of course we also intervene against Israeli Hill people in Judea and Samaria, but they do not gun down civilians. They retaliate against harassment against them.

DD: What can you tell us about the young woman draftee who warned of Hamas activity right before the attack of 7 October?
She was watching the border. That woman’s info did not enter the general picture. But the puzzle is complex.
We dispatched a unit based on concrete intel, before 7 October some indications in a certain area, one of our units was dispatched as a normal procedure, in past the biggest arrests were 5 people, and steps taken after that were in line with infiltration from 100 terrorists worst scenario.
On 7 October one unit went South and engaged immediately. We had cameras and automated guns over Gaza but these were taken out immediately.
Today it is impossible to infiltrate from Gaza into Israel proper.
There are hundred of weapons inside J&S and there have been very few uses of these arms,

DD: What price did the police pay since 7 October?
Since 7 October, 50 police were killed, 160 injured, including 8 who died when they ran out of ammunition in Sderot police station, and one police officer responding to a call was wounded, kidnapped and died.