The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) voiced alarm on Monday, August 21, that five Israeli citizens are currently being held in administrative detention without trial, terming this an increase over recent years, a major infringement on citizens’ rights and a blow to democracy. The five are all Arab, and Hadash MKs see their detentions as signaling a new policy of using the practice more widely against Arab citizens.

MK Jabareen, center, at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem (Photo: Al Ittihad)

ACRI argues that the policy of administrative detention violates the principle that imprisonment should be implemented only after an offense has been proven. The detention orders, based on emergency regulations going back to the British mandate, are for up to six months, though they can be renewed without limit.

“We see this as unprecedented and very alarming,” said ACRI legal counsel Dan Yakir to Jerusalem Post. “It’s alarming because administrative detention, if at all justified, should be restricted only to emergency situations, and used in a very limited manner.” Although in the Palestinian occupied West Bank it is clearly being used and abused regularly, until now it was rare in Israel itself.

According to Hadash Attorney MK Yousef Jabareen (Joint List), “This is the first time we have five young men from our community under administrative detention… This is unprecedented in the relationship of the authorities to our community. It seems someone is trying to take advantage of the political atmosphere after the al-Aksa incidents. If this becomes the new tool in dealing with the Arab community then that is a dangerous deterioration in Israeli policies. A state identifying itself as a democracy cannot really adopt such a tool in dealing with its own citizens,” he said.