In the past seventy years, there have been 25 administrative detentions of Jews in Israel, out of which 19 were carried out in the year and a half of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s tenure, Hakol Hayehudi’s Elchanan Gruner reported on Thursday, noting Gallant had launched an unprecedented, predatory campaign against the Jews of Judea and Samaria.
Administrative detention is an arrest made by the authority of an executive and not by a court. The arrest is not intended for investigation or trial nor to protect the detainee. Most of the time, administrative detention is done for security reasons, on the grounds that the detainee may endanger the security of the state sometime in the future.
In Israeli law, administrative detention gets its authority from the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945 that have been in effect since the British Mandate rule. In 1951, members of the Haredi underground Brit Kana’im (united zealots) were arrested and placed under administrative detention, which raised a fierce objection from the right-wing statesman who founded Minister Gallant’s Likud Party.
MK Menachem Begin (then chairman of the Herut Party) attacked the use of administrative detention, comparing it to Nazism:
“There are tyrannical laws, there are immoral laws, there are Nazi laws. Don’t ask me who determines which law is Nazi and which law is immoral. The law you used is tyrannical, it is immoral, and an immoral law is also illegal. Therefore, your arrest is arbitrary. You had no right to do this, when there is a Knesset, a court, when you have an investigative system.
In 1979, Israel enacted an Emergency Powers Law, which allows administrative detentions only during a state of emergency according to the Basic Law: The Government, but since the state of emergency has never been lifted, the validity of this law has never expired and it permits administrative detentions.
The Emergency Powers Law established the criteria for administrative detentions which are as undemocratic as can be imagined:
- The defense minister has the authority to detain a person for a period of up to six months if there is a likelihood that keeping that person in detention helps to maintain the security of the state.
- The defense minister has the authority to extend the administrative detention order.
- The powers of the defense minister to apply this law cannot be delegated.
When Gallant became defense minister, Avraham Yair Yared from Yitzhar had already been placed in administrative detention. Gallant, who took office in January 2023, extended Yared’s detention order, and since then, for a year and a half, Gallant has ordered the administrative detention of no less than 19 Jews in administrative detention, some of them for consecutive terms – without a trial, in decisions made behind closed doors.
The wave of administrative detentions came mainly after the response to the murders of Jews in Huawara, the terrorist attack on a gas station in Eli, and the murder of 14-year-old Binyamin Achimeir. All the administrative detentions of Jews were carried out as a result of Arab terrorism.
The most recent administrative detainee is Netanel Iluz, a United Hatzalah medic who treated victims on Simchat Torah under fire in the Gaza envelope. Iluz denies any connection to the claims made against him by anonymous Shin Bet agents who say he was at the events that followed Achimeir’s murder.
This week saw the release of Ariel Danino from administrative detention, which was imposed on him for setting up the defense of his community in Yitzhar immediately following the October 7 massacre. With Danino free, there are currently eight Jewish administrative detainees still behind bars without charges.
