Israel is using a notorious military tool to arrest its own Palestinian citizens
In the shadow of the Hamas-led October 7 attack and Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian citizens of Israel have been facing a wave of persecution. Hundreds have been arrested or interrogated, usually on the basis of social media activity; dozens more have been suspended or dismissed from Israeli academic institutions; and a recent amendment to Israel’s Counterterrorism Law is enabling unprecedented levels of surveillance.
Israel has routinely used administrative detention to arbitrarily incarcerate Palestinians in the occupied territories — who are subject to Israeli military rule — for months or even years on the basis of “classified” evidence, without the need for standard legal proceedings like presenting charges or holding a trial. Before the war, there was already a higher number of administrative detainees — over 1,300 — than at any time in the previous three decades; now, that figure has more than doubled.
Earlier this year, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir raised the prospect of using the measure more widely against Palestinian citizens, ostensibly to crack down on the plague of organized crime and gun violence within Arab communities in Israel… “It started with three detainees about a month and a half ago, and now we’re talking about seven,” Sawsan Zaher, a human rights attorney representing the three detainees from Arraba and Sakhnin, told +972 and Local Call. “It’s a very worrying escalation.”
