Police relations with Arabs and Jews in Israel

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 findings indicate, first, that Arabs are consistently more critical of the police than Jews, and these ethnic differences persist net of the influence of other variables. Second, in addition to the role played by ethnicity in explaining public assessments of the police, a number of other variables influence 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.