Exempting violent settlers from detention

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz has announced he will no longer apply detention without trial to Jewish settlers who are accused of attacking Palestinians.

Israel will continue to use administrative detention against Palestinians, creating a difference in legal practice which has been sharply criticised inside and outside the country.

Whether the regulation will hold may depend on another issue dividing Israel and the West – the attack on judicial independence.

Legal experts say Israel’s High Court may overturn Katz’s decision to apply administrative detention in a discriminatory way.

Professor Barak Medina of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told Haaretz that administrative detention could only be used under Israeli law when there is information that a suspect is about to harm others to prevent them from carrying out their plans.

"The decision over whether to arrest a person needs to be based only on the principle of the assessment of the danger that he personally poses," Medina said.

"[Katz] is not authorized to decide in advance that in any case involving someone who is a Jewish citizen of Israel, the authority won't be applied, even if there is no other legal way to prevent the danger, while the authority will continue to be applied toward Palestinians. That's an explicit declaration of a discriminatory policy, the results of which are liable to involve the illegality of all administrative detentions – of Palestinians too – since it's evidence that the state is resorting to extraneous considerations in its application of that authority."

Administrative detention is widely used by Israeli authorities against Palestinians suspected of terrorism in the West Bank, on the grounds that it protects the public.

In September, the most recent month for which the Israel Prison Service released data, around 40 Arab citizens and seven Jewish individuals were held under administrative detention. Approximately 3,400 West Bank Palestinians are imprisoned in Israel without trial.

Administrative detentions against a handful of Jewish extremists have been virtually the only step Israeli authorities have taken to reign in settler violence, which is now happening almost daily. Arrests are rare.

Aid agencies say there were more than 1,000 incidents between October 7, 2023, and July 2024. These include such rampages in Huwara and Umm Safa, an attack on four Arab women who took a wrong turn and ended up in Givat Ronen, and an attack on a school in Mu'arrajat.

The failure of Israeli authorities to clamp down on the phenomenon has led the US and other Western countries to begin issuing sanctions against extremist settler individuals and entities earlier this year.