Israel Katz, then Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy, and Water at the Energy Conference in Tel Aviv, March 13, 2023. Photo by Tomer Neuberg/Flash90
Israel’s new defense minister, Israel Katz, instructed the Israeli security system to stop the use of administrative detention against Jewish settlers and to look for alternative law enforcement methods, ending a years-long practice.
In a statement published on Friday morning, Katz wrote: “In a reality in which the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria is subject to serious Palestinian terrorist threats, with the support and backing of the Iranian axis of evil working to establish an eastern terror front against the State of Israel, and while unjustified international sanctions are taken against settlers and organizations in the settlement, it is not appropriate for the State of Israel to take such a severe measure against settlers.”
Administrative detention is a law enforcement method that allows the state to temporarily detain an individual without a trial if they are determined to be an imminent security risk.
In such cases, an individual can be arrested without having committed a crime if intelligence suggests they are actively involved in terror activities. While this measure is often used against Palestinian terrorists, in recent years, it has often been applied to Jewish settlers suspected of violence against Palestinians.
“If there is suspicion of committing criminal acts, the perpetrators can be prosecuted, and if not, there are other preventive measures that can be taken other than administrative arrest,” Katz wrote.
“I condemn any phenomenon of violence against Palestinians and taking the law into their own hands, and also appeal to the settlement leadership to take a similar public position and express an unequivocal position on the issue. The IDF and the rest of the security and law enforcement agencies should be allowed to deal with terrorism and Palestinian violence and no one should take the law into their own hands,” the defense minister wrote.
According to Army Radio, at the moment there are eight Jews in administrative detention. Katz’s decision means that he will not sign new detention orders, but the eight who are already detained will serve out their detention until the end of the period ordered by Katz’s predecessor, Yoav Gallant.
Politicians affiliated with the settlement movement reacted enthusiastically to the move, which settler leaders had demanded for years.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich celebrated Katz for eliminating the “long-standing discrimination against settlers in Judea and Samaria” and for ending the situation in which settlers were “second-class citizens” and subject to “draconian and undemocratic measures.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared, “There is a defense minister in Jerusalem!”
“Important and huge news… This is a correction of many years of mistreatment and [in]justice for those who love the land,” Ben Gvir said, while also adding that where settler violence, an “unacceptable phenomenon,” occurred, it should be handled by the legal system “just as [it] would be with any other citizen.”
Likud Knesset Member Avichai Boaron welcomed the move as “a first sign heralding a new attitude, whose ultimate outcome will be full sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.”
The head of the Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, Israel Ganz, also congratulated Katz.
“[Administrative detention] is a draconian tool whose use against citizens isn’t practiced in a state of law, and its purpose is to act as part of a war against the enemy. Legal authorities should act in accordance with the law and punish criminals according to democratic standards,” said Ganz.
However, there were also critical voices, who cautioned that the security establishment had long backed the practice as a crucial tool to curb settler violence.
Knesset Member and former IDF Chief Gadi Eisenkot warned that the move could bring about a new escalation in Judea and Samaria (West Bank).
The decision “will first of all harm the mission of the IDF as the sovereign providing security, law and order enforcement in Judea and Samaria. The target of the orders is not the law-abiding Jewish population, but radical terrorist elements that tarnish and endanger us as a society,” according to Eisenkot.
“All recent defense ministers signed administrative arrest warrants for Jews who participated in riots in Palestinian villages at the request of the Shin Bet,” explained Doron Kadosh, Army Radio’s military correspondent.
“During Gallant’s term in the last two years, a record was even broken in the number of administrative arrests for Jews (and this was a direct result of the fact that during this period a record was broken in the scope of Jewish terrorism in which Jews were involved in many Palestinian villages).”
Kadosh added that Katz’s instruction to find alternative legal tools “is exactly the opposite of the claim of the Shin Bet and the security establishment over the past few years – who stated that there is no other way to thwart Jewish terrorism other than administrative arrests. In recent years, the Shin Bet and the police have had great difficulty in forming evidentiary structures and indictments in many incidents of riots in Palestinian villages.”