Israel’s administrative detention rates soar after October 7

“We are suffering. We don’t know where he is, how he’s doing. We’ve seen how Israeli soldiers treat detainees since October 7. They cram them into tiny cells, they beat them because they hate Palestinians … I want to know, but I’m scared.” 

Najat hasn’t had news of her son since war broke out between Israel and Hamas. Mohammed Anwar Muna, 41, was placed in administrative detention on June 27, 2023 – for the seventh time. This emergency procedure, inherited from the British Mandate for Palestine (1920-1948), allows the Israeli army to imprison Palestinians indefinitely, without charge, trial or appeal. 

“It was around three in the morning when the Israeli soldiers surrounded the house. Because they had broken down the door in the past, Mohammed opened it,” Najat said. “My son said to the officer, ‘You’re not going to arrest me on the eve of Eid al-Adha, are you?’ The officer answered, ‘We’ve left you alone for three years.’” 

For more than an hour, the soldiers searched the apartment, watched by Mohammed’s wife and their three petrified children. After a week without any news, the Israeli human rights NGO HaMoked, which locates prisoners for their families, was able to give them some scant information.  

“Before the war, he was being held in Megiddo prison in the north of Israel,” Najat said, sitting in the clay-coloured living room of her family home in Nablus in the West Bank. “He was transferred on December 27, but we don’t know where … the court extended his detention by six months. That’s all that we know.” 

Before October 7, the NGO was receiving roughly 100 calls a week, coming mainly from this Israel-occupied territory. Since the attack, that number has risen to around 200 every day, with more and more coming from the Gaza Strip as well.  

“The army doesn’t give us any information. We’ve submitted several petitions to the Supreme Court to get a response. It’s a legal obligation. No one can be detained in secret,” said HaMoked’s Executive Director Jessica Montell. 

“Administrative detainees are imprisoned for three or six months, renewable,” she said. “In theory, there’s no limit. But in practice, most people are detained for six months or a year, always without charge or trial.” 

Those taken prisoner often have no way of knowing why they were arrested in the first place, Montell added. 

“Everything always happens on the basis of secret information. So they have no way to defend themselves,” she said. “They’re given a document with a one-line reason like ‘You are a senior Hamas official who threatens the region’s security’. The detention then has to be approved by a judge. The hearing takes place before a military court and if the judge approves the detention, you can file a petition with the Supreme Court. But it’s hard to defend yourself against these allegations.” 

‘You can’t go back to a normal life’ 

Mohammed Anwar Muna is an unwilling “regular” of administrative detention. A journalist with the Sanad news agency specialising in fact-checking, Mohammed has spent more than seven years in prison under this exceptional status. The first time he found himself in an Israeli prison was for 28 months in 2003, when he was just 18 years old. He was a student at the time.  

“We weren’t allowed to see him,” his mother said. Mohammed was eventually released, and returned to his university studies. “Because of all that, he took twice as long as everyone else to obtain his diploma,” his father Anouar added. 

He was arrested again in 2007. “The soldiers told him, ‘We’ll never let you live your life. You’ll never be happy. We’ll always be watching you.’,” his grandmother said. “I’m sure that’s why they came looking for him a week after his wedding. When his first child was born, they came back and said to him, ‘We want to congratulate you on the birth of your son – come with us’. Hamza was a week old.” 

Mohammed’s parents count off the times their son was sent to prison: 16 months in 2009, one month in 2012, 18 months in 2014, 20 months in 2018. In 2014, Mohammed went on a hunger strike to protest his administrative detention. Sixty-four days – in vain. He remained behind bars. 

“He lost lots of weight. They put him under a kind of medical surveillance for a month,” his parents said. 

Mohammed Muna’s case is far from unique.  

“It’s common practice that someone is held in administrative detention for six months to a year before being set free,” Montell said. “After a year or two, they are imprisoned again for six months. You can’t go back to a normal life, because there’s always the fear of being thrown into prison again.” 

The living room’s low-slung coffee table is soon covered in food. Orange juice, tea, coffee, pastries, freshly peeled fruit … Najat takes good care of her guests.  

“You know, it’s because he’s a journalist that they placed him in administrative detention. He shows the truth of the occupation. He’s well-known, and people love him. Alhamdulillah, we’re proud of him,” she said with a smile.  

“The aim is to stop him from working,” Anouar said, sitting comfortably next to his grandson. 

‘An anathema in any democratic society’ 

Are the Israeli authorities abusing this exceptional measure? In 2012, a report by the European Parliament referred to it as being used “principally to constrain Palestinian political activism”. In 2020, Michael Lynk, special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories, described it as “an anathema in any democratic society that follows the rule of law”. 

“When the democratic state arrests and detains someone, it is required to charge the person, present its evidence in an open trial, allow for a full defence and try to persuade an impartial judiciary of its allegations beyond a reasonable doubt,” he wrote.

For their part, the Israeli authorities justify the increase of the number of people in administrative detention by the worsening security situation in the Occupied Territories.  

“Since the October 7 massacre, terrorist attacks have multiplied in Judah and Samaria [Editor’s note: the names used by the Israeli authorities to refer to the occupied West Bank]. The increase in the number of administrative arrests reflects the sharp rise in attempted terror attacks in the region,” the Israeli army spokesperson said. “Administrative detention is only used in situations where the security authorities have reliable information indicating that an individual represents a real danger for the region’s security, and in the absence of other solutions to reduce the risk.” 

The army also stated that decisions are taken on a “case-by-case basis” by a military commander and that they are subject to “a judicial review procedure led by a military court, during which the information underpinning the arrest warrant is thoroughly examined”.  

“The decisions of the military court are subject to the examination of the court of appeals and the High Court of Justice,” the spokesperson said. 

It’s not enough to convince Israel’s human rights NGOs.  

“Israel has long used [administrative detention] en masse as a means of controlling the population,” said Dror Sadot, spokesperson for the NGO B’Tselem. “It’s illegal, and of course immoral.” 

For HaMoked’s Montell, “administrative detention is governed by international law,” she said. “A person is arrested not because they are suspected of having committed a crime, but because they represent a future threat and there is no other way of avoiding it. From an international law perspective, this should be a very rare occurrence.” 

More than 3,000 people in administrative detention 

Hamas’s attacks in southern Israel, the worst in the country’s history, have had far-reaching consequences. The number of people in administrative detention has exploded in the occupied West Bank, as well as in besieged Gaza, where the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 24,000 people, according to the enclave’s health ministry.  

“Before October 7, there were 1,200 people in administrative detention. At the start of January, this rose to 3,291 out of a total number of 8,600 Palestinians in detention,” Montell said. “It’s massive. These people detained without charge or trial represent almost 40 percent of Palestinians in detention.” 

Detention conditions have likewise worsened considerably over the past three months.  

“Before, we could speak with him, see him,” Mohammed’s mother Najat said. “It’s worse since the war began. We’re scared.” 

“Every two weeks, detainees’ families would come to visit them,” Montell said. “Lawyers too. The International Committee of the Red Cross regularly visited to monitor the detention conditions. Now, there are no more phone calls, no more visits. Sometimes, people call us just to check if their relative is still being held in the same place.” 

His face impassive, Mohamed’s father spoke of “the death of a prisoner”. The reality is worse than he realises.  

“Seven Palestinians have died in detention since the start of the war,” said Mothafar Thoqan, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoners and Ex-prisoners. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, at least two of them, including 38-year-old Thaer Abu Assab, had been subjected to violence before dying. Referring to the Gazans held in Sde Teiman military base close to Beersheva in the south, Haaretz wrote that the detainees were “blindfolded and handcuffed for most of the day, and the lights were kept on all through the night”. 

For the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, quoted by AFP, the death of Thaer Abu Assab in November in Ketziot prison “raises serious suspicions that the IPS (Israeli Prison Service) was evolving from a professional incarceration organisation into a vindictive and punitive force”. 

The Israeli army opened an investigation without specifying the number of deaths. “We are aware of the death of terrorists in military detention centres and an investigation is underway,” a spokesperson told AFP. 

To make matters worse, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a member of the extreme right Jewish Power party, passed an emergency order tightening prison conditions due to a lack of space in prisons, including setting the standard of two square metres for each prisoner. 

“Now, there can be as many as eight people in the same room. The mattresses are piled up one against the other,” Montell said. “They are no longer allowed out into the courtyard. Access to hot water is limited. The people that we’ve been able to visit have lost a lot of weight and many of them complain of violence and humiliation.”  

‘The soldiers want to break us’ 

In Nablus, Hamza listens to his grandparents tell his father’s story without blinking.  

“I miss my dad. I need him,” said the young boy, whose features echo those of his father, whose portrait hangs alone in the corner of the room. “I’m proud of him. Maybe I’ll become a journalist like him. I want to tell people what’s happening here.” 

“Mohammed hasn’t seen his children grow up,” Najat said. “His two-year-old daughter, the youngest, is always at the door calling for her father.” 

Abdelkrim Muna has also spent time in administrative detention, like his older brother – but “only” four times.  

“I remember that the cell was very small, and that we didn’t know what was happening outside. There were ten of us in the same room,” he said. When asked if he was treated well, the 37-year-old smiled. “The soldiers want to break us. They think that we’re weak. But we’re strong. And even if we’re suffering, we never let them see it. Our dignity matters more than anything.” 

“It’s a knife at our throats”, the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoners and Ex-prisoners’ spokesperson Thoqan said.  

Thoqan lives in the Balata refugee camp, the most densely crowded in the West Bank. It’s a warren of narrow streets that bear the scars of Israeli military operations. Some of the walls have been disfigured where the bullets hit them. Here, a house is burning. There, another has been shattered by a drone. You can feel the violence thick in the air. The “fighters” keep watch, patrol. Like this man, dressed all in black, an M-16 assault rifle strapped to his chest, met by chance at a bend in a road. The day before, violent clashes broke out with the “occupation army”. Balata is on high alert. 

“They blindfolded me and tied my hands tightly behind my back. It hurt,” said Thoqan, who was arrested in 2005. “When I asked the soldier to loosen them, he tightened the restraints even more. I stayed like that in a basement for 24 hours. I was cold.”  

For a year, he was transferred from prison to prison: Megiddo, Ofer, Naqab … he could talk forever on the subject.  

“The journeys were never-ending. I didn’t drink water so I wouldn’t have to urinate, because it was impossible with my hands tied,” he said. “I would try to lift myself up to see the sea, because I’d never seen it before.” 

Thoqan still remembers walking into Shatta prison.  

“When you enter, there’s a photo of a lion. On the other side, it’s a rabbit,” he said. “It was their way of telling us how we were going to leave there.” 

For the disillusioned Thoqan, the word “peace” has lost all meaning. The father of seven has no more hope left in him.  

“In 1993, the Oslo Accords promised us a state, freedom. What do we have today? Nothing,” he said. “Tomorrow, they might come to take me away. They’re just trying to take our dignity from us.” 

This article has been adapted from the original in French.