The national "City without Violence" program, led by the Ministry of Public Security, is expanding its operations to 12 additional communities, all within the Non-Jewish sector. The expansion was marked by a ceremony held at the Ministry of Public Security, and attended by Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch; the ministry's Director General, Ya'akov Ganot; and the program's director, retired Brigadier-General Danni Shachar; as well as the heads of the joining authorities.
"An improvement in the level of personal security is an improvement in the quality of life of the residents of those authorities - and that is our goal," said Minister Aharonovitch during the ceremony. "The 'City without Violence' program requires constant contact between the local authorities, the police, and the government ministries; as well as full cooperation between all the factors operating within the local authority, in order to prevent all the various types of violent phenomena."
The Director General of the Ministry of Public Security, Ya'akov Ganot, said that the combination between the civic body and the law enforcement authority is key. "The success of those 12 communities will lead to the future expansion of the project into additional communities," added the Director General.
86 local authorities are currently included in the "City without Violence", which is an integrative program that was established as a result of a cooperation between the Ministry of Public Security, the police, the education ministries, the welfare ministries, the Ministry of Immigration Absorption, and other factors operating within the local authorities. Prevention programs in the field of education are currently being implemented within the authorities as part of the "City without Violence" program, starting with kindergartens and up to high schools.
The prevention programs include: prevention of domestic abuse and violence towards teens, with the help of the welfare divisions; leisure and informal education activities; and law enforcement activities, which contain municipal patrolling, use of security cameras, and a municipal monitoring center.
The program already had 26 Arab local authorities participating, including: Nazareth, Sachnin, and Shfar'am; alongside 5 mixed community cities including: Ramla, Lod and Acre. These authorities will be joined by 12 new authorities, which will be undergoing community sorting processes within the next few months, before beginning to implement the "City without Violence" program. The northern communities that will be joining are: Kfar-Kana, Ilut, Kfar-Raina, Mash'had, Yafia and Tora'an. The central communities that will be joining are: Zemer and Taybe; and the southern communities are: the Abu-Basma Regional Council, the Bedouin town of Lakiya, Tel-Sheva and Segev-Shalom.
Director of "City without Violence", Danni Shachar, said, "We welcome the joining of the new authorities from the Non-Jewish sector, and praise the serious and extensive work that is being done in these communities in order to annihilate violence and improve the resident's quality of life. The program's headquarters will do everything in its power to help these authorities to fully operate all the "City without Violence" programs, in each one of our areas of work."