Smotrich opposes reinstating administrative detention for violent Israeli settlers
Israel’s Army Radio has reported that Israel’s internal intelligence service, Shin Bet, was likely to recommend that the government reinstate administrative detention for violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank, as the violence has reached record levels in recent months.
The measure was ended in November by then-Defence Minister Israel Katz. It allows Israeli authorities to hold people without charge or trial.
The far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has expressed his opposition to reinstating the policy, saying he hopes “the defence minister will not agree to this under any circumstances”.
“The decision to neutralise the use of this draconian tool was brave and correct – it is undemocratic and dangerous,” Smotrich said.
Despite his opposition on what appear to be principled grounds, however, Israeli authorities continue to use administrative detention routinely against Palestinians.
The Israeli NGO B’Tselem said that as of June this year, more than 3,000 Palestinians were being held in administrative detention.
Palestinian groups accuse Israel of ‘physical and psychological destruction’ of child prisoners
Palestinian prisoner organisations have accused Israel of carrying out “physical and psychological destruction operations” against child detainees in its prisons.
In a joint statement marking World Children’s Day, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, and Addameer said more than 1,630 children have been arrested in the occupied West Bank since the war on Gaza began.
About 350 children, including two girls, are currently held in Israeli prisons, with more than 90 in administrative detention without charge, the groups said.
The organisations said children face “torture, starvation, medical crimes, systematic looting and deprivation”, adding that Israel “treats them as a ‘security threat’, not as children in need of protection and care”.
Israel’s seizure of Palestinian bodies ‘tantamount to torture’ of families
We’ve been speaking to the mother of a boy killed earlier this week by Israeli forces during a raid in the Far’a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. She just wants to receive the body of her child and lay him to rest in a dignified manner in a marked grave that she can visit.
This boy, 15, named Jadallah Jihad Jumaa Jadallah, was shot. Several Israeli soldiers were caught on video milling and walking around past him for minutes, as he moved and tried to sit up. He bled to death.
After the boy died, Israeli soldiers took his body, in what has become an established policy by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank. Israeli soldiers not only fail to lend help to those they injure and prevent medical crews from getting to them to offer life-saving aid, but they also take the bodies of the Palestinians they kill.
It is a policy that is tantamount to torture of the families. We’ve seen this time and time again across the occupied West Bank, not just in this one incident.
