Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Friday morning that he has decided to stop the use of administrative arrest warrants against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria.
Such orders involved the arrest and detention of an individual without trial and could last for up to six months. They could be applied to either Israelis or Palestinians and were based upon suitable proof that was presented to a security official of a high enough rank that the detainee should be arrested in the interests of state or public security. The evidence against a detainee is almost universally classified material that is not made available to the detainee, legal counsel, or the general public.
These and other powers granted to the military administration of Judea and Samaria are based in a British law known as the Defence (Emergency) Regulations, passed in 1945 and repealed by the British before withdrawing from Israel in 1948. Israel's government accepted them into law with its first act, although with some amendments, notably the legitimization of Jewish immigrants who had been considered illegal under the British mandate.
The orders were first used in Judea and Samaria shortly after the Six-Day War, and have been employed ever since either preemptively to incarcerate those who were deemed likely to undertake nationalist activities or when the judicial system ruled that there were insufficient grounds to incarcerate a suspect within the legal system. Administrative detention can be applied even in the absence of other enforcement procedures such as bringing charges or investigating an incident. In Judea and Samaria, the orders can be issued beginning at the district commander level of the IDF, and are subject to appeal in the military court system.
The ISA, although frequently a partner in presenting the classified evidence against the detainee, does not have the power to actually issue the administrative orders on its own. Defense Minister Israel Katz leveraged this when informing ISA director Ronen Bar that no further orders would be granted against Israelis in Judea and Samaria.
As of 2015, the Israeli government approved their use against Israelis to prevent 'price tag' attacks against Palestinians, although Israelis had been subjected to administrative detention as early as 1951 with the arrest of the Haredi underground 'Pact of the Zealots'. The commanding majority of the orders were imposed against members of the Hilltop Youth movement, although not all were suspected of direct involvement in such attacks - notably, activist Ariel Daninu was imprisoned after establishing the "Fighting For Our Lives" WhatsApp group that coordinated protests against Palestinian proximity to Israeli towns. The orders have long been deplored by Israel's right-wing parties, with individuals like MKs Itamar Ben-Gvir and Limor Son Har Melech (Otzma Yehudit) and Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party) attempting to pass legislation forbidding their use against Israelis. The Honenu legal aid organization has frequently fought against such orders in court, with varying degrees of success.
Minister Katz emphasized that he still condemned vigilante action against Palestinians, and asked Director Bar to provide alternatives to administrative detention. His directive did not cancel existing orders nor free those incarcerated under administrative detention, nor did it mean that Israelis cannot be arrested if there exists a means to do so within the judicial system - only the end of the extrajudicial tool of administrative detention.
Administrative detention in Judea and Samaria can include imprisonment in a detention facility, house arrests, curfews, or confinement to a particular area, with police oversight of the detainees' compliance. Similar orders can be issued banishing an individual from Judea and Samaria, and forbidding their return until the order expires. Any of these may serve as a potential alternative or a new regulation may be formulated to take their place.