Avshalom Peled Takes Command of Jerusalem's Million-Person District

Superintendent Avshalom Peled has taken over as commander of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Police, the force announced. In his most recent posts he served as Deputy Commissioner-General and head of the Training Division, and for several months as Deputy Commissioner-General.

The Jerusalem District is responsible for security and public order in Jerusalem itself and across the Jerusalem Mountains, taking in the city of Beit Shemesh and the settlements and councils of Mevaseret Zion, Abu Ghosh, Kiryat Ye’arim, Har Adar, Givat Ze’ev, Givon and Mateh Yehuda. More than a million residents live in it (Jews, Muslims and Christians) in what the police described as a unique human fabric. The force set out the job in its own words: maintaining stability and what it called the delicate balance in the Old City and at sites holy to the three religions, handling terrorist threats and security incidents, protecting the country’s central government institutions, and dealing with the ordinary business of a large city, including crime, riots and frequent and varied protests.

What the district actually is

The Israel Police is a single national force of roughly 35,000 personnel, supported by tens of thousands of Civil Guard volunteers and divided into six regional districts alongside specialist national units such as the Border Police, the Yamam counter-terrorism unit and the Lahav 433 serious crime and corruption command, according to a public overview of the force. Jerusalem is one of those six districts and one of the oldest police commands in the country, with a lineage running back through the British Mandate, covering municipal Jerusalem and the surrounding suburbs and councils, as the district’s own profile records. Unlike a British chief constable or an American police chief, a district commander in Israel is a serving officer of a national force posted to a region, not the head of an independent department.

The job that comes with the badge

The hardest element is the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif and the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which falls under the district’s responsibility. Peled was appointed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and sworn in roughly six weeks before the start of Ramadan, a period that has repeatedly produced friction in the Old City; Haaretz reported on 5 January 2026 that the appointment handed him the keys to the Temple Mount compound at exactly that moment. Israel’s parliament, supreme court and government ministries all sit inside the same district, which is what the police statement means by the country’s central government institutions.

The career behind the appointment

Published accounts of Peled’s service describe a career built almost entirely inside the Border Police and Jerusalem: enlistment as a combat operator in 1985, a spell as a platoon commander in Yamam, command of the Beit Shemesh police station in 1998, head of the Border Police operations department in 2002, command of the Border Police in Gaza in 2004, deputy commander of the Border Police in 2011 and deputy commander of the Jerusalem District in 2012, according to a public record of his career. If accurate, it means he returns to a district he already knows from the deputy’s chair.

What the announcement did not say

The police statement did not name the outgoing commander, give any term for the appointment, or set out any priority beyond the standing list of district responsibilities. It said nothing about how the district would handle Ramadan, about staffing levels, or about the balance between counter-terrorism work and ordinary crime. It also gave no indication of who would replace Peled in his previous national role.