In a letter submitted to the national security minister, 160 heads of local authorities have rightly warned of the consequences of the dramatic cuts to the budget of Israel’s National Authority for Community Safety, which were announced last week.
In practice, these cuts mean the cessation of the authority’s activities and the dismissal of the majority of its employees: some 1,500 community workers active throughout the country to prevent and address various forms of violence and harmful behavior, including drug and alcohol addiction, bullying, severe violence, and suicide, as well as a host of other social phenomena that have a negative impact on individuals and communities.
The National Authority for Community Safety was created in 2018 as a central component of the National Security Ministry, based on the premise that communal and personal security are part of national security. Its establishment signaled the state’s willingness to routinely invest in preventing and treating destructive social phenomena through a professional body operating mainly at the municipal level.
Closing down the authority means cutting essential services that are not a luxury in Israeli society. Our security as a state depends on the security and protection of all the communities that comprise it. Harming the authority means harming Israel’s security.
It is important to realize that these cuts will especially hurt the most underserved and vulnerable populations in Israel, for whom the authority’s activities are all they have. Without protection for these communities, the problems facing Israeli society will intensify in the future. In fact, that future is already here, with violent crime, addictions, and a loss of trust in the state and in society.
The danger of making cuts to the community
Making these cuts at the current time is especially dangerous, for several reasons.
First, successfully addressing the enormous social and psychological costs of the war requires considerable government resources and services.
Teenagers who were evacuated from their homes for many months are trying to find their place again, soldiers are returning traumatized from the battlefield, and the difficult economic situation is wearing down the public.
The decision to dismiss those very professionals who are supposed to be helping these groups, at this particular time, is a great injustice. Now is the time to be investing in social services, not doing away with them.
Second, the budget of the National Security Ministry has never been larger. Indeed, it has been doubled in order to cover aspects of the ministry’s activities that are perceived as more security-related, and yet no budget has been left for the Authority for Community Safety. This is the only agency in Israel responsible for preventing and addressing violence.
Don’t Israel’s citizens also deserve security at home, in the community, in schools? Eliminating the authority means throwing away a body of professional knowledge that has been built up with great effort over the years and that will not be easily restored.
Third, while this is a major blow that will take a toll on the entire public, parts of the public will pay a particularly heavy price for it in the immediate term.
For example, in Arab local authorities, the authority’s employees are on the front line of the struggle on behalf of at-risk and dropout youth, and of efforts to strengthen communities and individuals’ sense of belonging to the community and the state. When this battle is lost, the big winner is organized crime.
AT A time when the levels of violent crime in Arab society are breaking all records, with the murder rate higher than ever (237 murders of members of Arab society in 2024, and 52 since the beginning of 2025), and trust in state institutions is at an all-time low, it is impossible to understand the decision to cease the professional activities of those who are working hand in hand with the police against the rising tide of violence.
The work plans of the National Security Ministry also refer to the Authority for Community Safety as a key actor in the fight against crime. Arab local authorities do not have the resources to fund the struggle against violence and the factors that feed it (dropout, alcohol, addictions, and so on).
And fourth, the decision to dismiss 1,500 authority employees, thereby harming a large number of families at a time of war and economic crisis, with a wave of the hand and without warning, is utterly heartless. This is not a matter of increasing efficiency, and these are hardly unnecessary employees who are a burden on the public system. Rather, these are dedicated workers who constitute the core of preventive work in both Jewish and Arab local authorities.
We call on the National Security Ministry to immediately halt these huge cuts, which will effectively lead to the cessation of the authority’s activity in all Israeli cities and will harm our communities.
Yael Litmanovitz is an IDI senior researcher, and Tomer Lotan is a visiting senior fellow.