Defense Minister Katz announces end to administrative detention for West Bank settlers

New Defense Minister Israel Katz announces an end to administrative detention orders for West Bank settlers, a controversial policy of holding suspects without charge.

While the practice is primarily deployed against Palestinians, it is also used against some extremist Jewish Israelis. It sees individuals held without charge for up to six months at a time. The detentions can be renewed indefinitely while allowing military prosecutors to keep suspects from being able to see the evidence against them.

In a statement, Katz says that “in a reality where the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria is subject to serious Palestinian terror threats and unjustified international sanctions are taken against the settlers, it is not appropriate for the State of Israel to take such a severe measure against the people of the settlements.”

Katz met with Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar this week and told him that he had decided “to stop the use of administrative detention orders against Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria, and asked him to put alternative tools in place,” his office says.

Administrative detention policies allow the Defense Ministry to hold suspects without charge, while administrative restraining orders bar them from visiting certain areas or communicating with certain people. The tool is typically used when authorities have intelligence tying a suspect to a crime but do not have enough evidence for charges to stand up in a court of law.

Katz says that “if there is suspicion of criminal acts, the perpetrators can be prosecuted, and if not, there are other preventive measures that can be taken other than administrative detention orders.”

“I condemn any phenomenon of violence against Palestinians and taking the law into one’s own hands, and I also appeal to the settlement leadership to take a similar public position and express an unequivocal position on the issue,” the minister adds.

Settler violence spiked after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Israeli authorities rarely arrest Jewish perpetrators in such attacks. Rights groups lament that convictions are even more unusual and that the vast majority of charges in these types of attacks are dropped.

As recently as this past weekend, dozens of masked settlers set fire to several buildings and a car in the West Bank village of Beit Furik near Nablus, according to the IDF. There has been no news of arrests.