Wearing a face mask outdoors in the West Bank will now be punishable by up to six months in prison, the army announced on Sunday.
If an individual is caught committing a crime while wearing a face mask, they can be sentenced to a minimum of two years, solely based on the face mask aspect of the offense.
This unusual move is an initiative to make it harder for both Hamas terrorists and Jewish extremists perpetrating violence and nationalistic offenses to avoid arrest.
Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth, the IDF Central Command chief covering Judea and Samaria, signed the order on Sunday.
Until now, according to Israeli law enforcement, it has at times been hard for either the IDF or the police to arrest suspects because their faces were covered, making it easy for them to purposely quickly mix and intermingle with others.
This made it difficult for law enforcement to differentiate between the individuals who had perpetrated a particularly violent offense or arson crime, and others who may have just carried out “light” rioting.
The IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) have also accused the police in the West Bank of frequently purposely avoiding arresting extremist Jews and only arresting Palestinians.
Also, mass violence in Judea and Samaria has increased on both sides of the conflict, though the volume of Palestinian terror-murder actions is still far more than on the Jewish side.
According to the new policy, wearing a face mask essentially designates an individual as a lawbreaker who is planning to commit an offense.
By having the legal authority to arrest such persons, the IDF and the police aim to apprehend lawbreakers on both sides before they enter an area where they plan to commit an offense.
Police officers now have the authority to even ban such persons from remaining in the West Bank, pending any additional legal proceedings against them.
Conversely, if such individuals remove their face masks to avoid arrest for that offense, it will be easier to identify and prosecute them based on their unmasked identity.
Hopes to deter some violent conduct
There is also a hope that simply issuing the fresh order, combined with some enforcement, may deter some of the violent conduct seen in the past based on a new perception by offenders on both sides that their chances of being caught and jailed have significantly increased.
If before, even when arresting someone, the individual could claim mistaken identity and that another member of the crowd had committed the violent act in question, now they will not be able to claim they had not donned a face mask.
Bluth also passed this order at a time when, for six to seven months now, Defense Minister Israel Katz has been blocking the Shin Bet from using administrative detention against extremist Jews, given that classified intelligence, which cannot be produced in court, was used to incriminate them in the first place.
In contrast, a record high of around 3,700 Palestinians are in administrative detention, with a total of approximately 10,700 Palestinians in jail or detained.
Notably, there is an exception to the face mask policy for religious reasons, such as a woman wearing a hijab.