Retired Deputy Commissioner Alik Ron, who headed the Israel Police's Northern District, says outlawing the Islamic Movement is the easy, but ineffective, way to deal with the movement.
"I have been following this movement for years," Ron told Arutz Sheva. "In '98 I said that the movement is a despicable one and that it poses a danger to the state of Israel, and that Sheikh Raed Salah, who was mayor of Umm el Fahm, is a liar. But I am not sure this decision is a wise one."
Instead, Israel needs to catch the individual Arab inciters and put them in jail, he said. "I demand that the state of Israel roll up its sleeves, gird its loins and pick out all of the contemptible inciters, and all those who raise funds from forbidden places, and place them behind bars."
"I am not sure that the sweeping decision to outlaw the movement is the right one," he explained. "I see it as an extreme step that constitutes a way to avoid girding the loins and making an effort to bring those contemptible people to justice."
"These contemptible people in this movement, are the ones doing the forbidden things and trying to harm state security and they need to be taken care of. That is why I am not so enthusiastic about this sweeping decision, because we could find out that in the end, we lost more than we gained.
"The Islamic Movement is not infinite," Ron stated, "and its expansion needs to be stopped. Today you see how Daesh (ISIS) is able to fire up the imaginations of thousands of young people in Europe, so it is not certain that outlawing them will stop them."