Over 500 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons without charge under what is called ‘administrative detention’. The procedure derives from British regulations from the days when Britain held Palestine under a League of Nations mandate: no formal charge or trial is involved and the detention can be extended indefinitely. A factsheet about the process is HERE. In October 2020 Hisham Abu Hawash was detained in this way. He went on hunger strike to demand his release. After 141 days he was in a coma and close to death. As the journalist Ramzy Baroud wrote HERE, the Israeli government (eventually) feared widespread resistance if he were to die and he was released on 26 February 2022. While his release was good news, hundreds of other Palestinians remain subject to this process.
Palestinian prisoners are now refusing to take part in Israeli courts that deal with administrative detention, citing the inherent unfairness in the procedures. The English version of their statement (20 January 2022) is HERE. Thirty detainees recently held a collective hunger strike against their treatment, which has only recently been suspended while the campaign continues.
For more background on this issue see THIS FACTSHEET prepared by the Institute for Middle East Understanding in September 2021.
The British Government’s position was given in a response to a Parliamentary Question as follows: “We are aware of Israel’s use of administrative detention which, according to international law, should be used only when security makes this absolutely necessary. We call on the Israeli authorities to either charge or release detainees. We are committed to working with Israel to secure improvements to the practices surrounding children in detention.”