The High Court on Friday sharply limited the powers of police to conduct random searches of Israelis, legal experts said, in a decision that will have far-reaching consequences for the way police operate. In an appeal for an individual who was arrested for holding a knife, the court said that the way police had discovered the knife – by asking the individual to empty his pockets randomly, without a clear reason for suspicion – was illegal. As a result, dozens of criminal convictions of individuals who were caught carrying illegal knives are expected to be overturned.

Legal experts said that they expected lawyers to use the case as a precedent for other instances of random searches, such as searches that resulted in discovery of illegal drugs.