Knesset member slams defense minister's decision to suspend administrative arrest for illegal settlers

By Abderaouf Arnaout

JERUSALEM (AA) – Israeli leftist group Peace Now and Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi strongly condemned on Friday Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz's decision to suspend the administrative detention orders against illegal Israeli settlers, calling it "support for Jewish terrorism."

Peace Now, which monitors and opposes Israeli settlement activities in the occupied territories, stated in a post on X: "The cancellation of administrative detention orders for settlers alone is a cynical and reckless move that whitewashes and normalizes the rise of Jewish terrorism under the cover of war."

Tibi said, "This is effectively a formal approval from the defense minister for Jewish terrorism... This is a government of terrorism supporters."

Earlier on Friday, the Israeli Ministry of Defense announced Katz’s decision to suspend administrative detention orders against illegal Israeli settlers accused of attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Administrative detention, which relies on undisclosed evidence, has predominantly been used against Palestinians, with 3,443 currently held in Israeli prisons, according to the Palestinian prisoners' affairs groups.

There are no official Israeli figures on illegal settlers subjected to administrative detention, but estimates indicate that only a few have ever been detained under this law.

According to Peace Now, there are more than 720,000 illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Tension has been running high in the West Bank due to Israel’s brutal war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 44,000 people, mostly women and children, following a Hamas attack last year.

Nearly 795 Palestinians have since been killed and over 6,400 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory, according to the Health Ministry.

In July, the International Court of Justice issued a landmark advisory opinion that declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land “illegal” and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

* Writing by Ikram Kouachi