Most administrative detainees are former prisoners<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israeli occupation authorities have issued more than 4,000 administrative detention orders against Palestinians since the start of this year, the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The figure covers new orders and renewals, and marks a sharp escalation in how often the occupation turns to the practice. The center’s director, Riyad al-Ashqar, says the occupation has leaned on administrative detention far harder since its genocidal war on Gaza began. Mass arrests in that stretch drove the surge. Since then it has issued more than 21,000 such orders, with no charges filed and no convictions, holding people in arbitrary detention with nothing to justify it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over two and a half years that buildup has driven the number of administrative detainees from 1,300 before October 7, 2023, to more than 3,400 by June 2026. They now make up 35 percent of the 9,500 Palestinians in occupation prisons, a share the prisoners’ movement has never seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of those held under administrative detention today are former prisoners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Time and again, the occupation arrests detainees it has already released, issuing fresh orders to keep them behind bars as long as it can. Many had already served time, under administrative detention or a sentence, before being taken back into custody. Administrative detention is one of the occupation’s tools of collective punishment, a way to drive Palestinian leaders and influential figures out of public life. It targets activists, community organizers, and educated Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Women and children have not been spared. Occupation prisons now hold 19 women under administrative detention without charge, many on orders renewed three times in a row. Some are former prisoners arrested again after their release: Yasmin Shaaban, the journalist Bushra al-Tawil, and Hana Hammad, a minor from Hebron whose detention has been renewed for a third time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nearly 90 minors are held under administrative detention without charge: the occupation singles out children for abuse and arrest, then throws them into detention with no indictment and no fair trial, one crime piled on another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By design, al-Ashqar says, the occupation multiplies these orders to drain away the years prisoners spend behind bars, with no legal basis and no regard for the limits international law places on the practice. International law allows administrative detention only in narrowly defined circumstances and under strict conditions: the detainee must know the charge against him, the detention must carry a fixed time limit, and he must have a lawyer to challenge the charge. The occupation meets none of these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the occupation, administrative detention is a security matter, run from start to finish by the Shin Bet. The agency tells the sham court’s judge whom to detain and whose orders to renew, all on secret charges no one is allowed to see. No indictment is filed. No conviction is entered. People are held for years on nothing more than suspicion and intelligence reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The occupation’s courts are complicit, keeping the practice running. Acting on the recommendation of the intelligence services, they have rejected 99 percent of the appeals that detainees’ lawyers brought before the appeals and supreme courts. The best a detainee can hope for is one more renewal paired with a substantive ruling that bars any further extension, and even that comes only after at least two years already spent in administrative detention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies called on the international bodies that set the standards meant to rein in administrative detention to step in seriously and stop the occupation from driving this arbitrary policy further. It pressed them to force the occupation to release the administrative detainees it holds without charge or cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most administrative detainees are former prisoners Israeli occupation authorities have issued more than 4,000 administrative detention orders against Palestinians since the start of this year, the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies says. The figure covers new orders and renewals, and marks a sharp escalation in how often the occupation turns to the practice. The center’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[245,157,45,41,39,27,28,33],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports","tag-administrative-detainees","tag-administrative-detention","tag-human-rights-violations","tag-international-conventions","tag-israeli-prisons","tag-political-prisoners","tag-prison","tag-prisoners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1455,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions\/1455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}