Report: Prosecutors won’t defend administrative detention for Palestinians only
For now, Katz’s decision to cancel controversial measure only for settlers said defensible since it’s just politics; if that changes, i24 says State Attorney’s Office will object
The State Attorney’s Office will not defend administrative detentions if new Defense Minister Israel Katz goes forward with his plan to apply the controversial measure only against Palestinians, Hebrew media reported Thursday, a week after the decision to cancel the measure for Jewish settlers in the West Bank was announced.
According to i24, it was decided at a meeting convened by State Attorney Amit Aisman on Thursday that Katz’s decision was currently defendable because there are still Jews in administrative detention, ostensibly making the decision a mere political statement without any impact on the ground.
But the unsourced report said Aisman’s office concluded that should the defense minister’s position become the government’s de facto policy, it would be legally impossible to defend detention orders that by definition are only issued against certain groups of the population.
The network’s legal affairs reporter Avishai Grinzaig said the state attorney’s conclusion resulted from Katz’s “decision to express himself in a rather awkward fashion.” Aisman declined to respond to the report.
Katz, who took office on November 8, announced last Friday that he would end administrative detentions against Jewish settlers in the West Bank, saying it was “not appropriate” for Israel to use such a harsh measure “in a reality where the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria is subject to serious Palestinian terror threats and unjustified international sanctions.”
The move was welcomed by right-wing politicians, who have slammed Katz’s predecessor Yoav Gallant for issuing administrative detention orders against 16 Jewish terror suspects. The White House, Palestinian Authority, and Israel’s left-wing and Arab parties criticized the move, saying it would encourage settler violence.
According to the Israel Prison Service, there are currently some 3,400 Palestinians in administrative detention and just seven Jewish Israelis.
The controversial measure allows the Defense Ministry to hold suspects without charge for up to six months, often without access to legal counsel. It is typically used when authorities have intelligence tying a suspect to a crime but not enough evidence for charges to stand up in a court of law. The detentions can be renewed indefinitely while allowing military prosecutors to keep suspects from being able to see the evidence against them.
Violence by settlers against Palestinians has soared amid the Gaza war, which was sparked when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages. In recent weeks, extremist settlers have killed livestock and attacked and set fire to vehicles in dozens-strong rampages through West Bank Palestinian villages.
Right-wing extremists have also grown increasingly confrontational toward Israeli security forces, which control the West Bank. Last weekend, during a Jewish pilgrimage to the holy city of Hebron in the West Bank, five people were arrested after dozens of extremists tried to assault Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, head of the IDF Central Command, which oversees the territory.
