A proposed bill to severely curb the Shin Bet’s ability to hold Israeli citizens in administrative detention — without charge or trial — has been met with alarm by the security agency, which cited concerns its ability to thwart terror would be hampered should the bill pass into law, according to Saturday reports.
The bill, proposed by hard-right Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman, is scheduled to be discussed on Sunday by the Constitution Law and Justice Committee, which Rothman chairs.
The proposed legislation would forbid the use of administrative detention or administrative restraining orders against Israeli citizens, unless they are members of a certain list of terror groups, which would be decided on and approved by the committee.
The bill is seen as an attempt to prevent the administrative detention practice in the case of right-wing extremists accused of plotting attacks on Palestinians.
Administrative detention policies allow the Defense Ministry to hold suspects without charge while administrative restraining orders bar them from visiting certain areas or communicating with certain people. The tool is typically used when authorities have intelligence tying a suspect to a crime, but do not have enough evidence for charges to stand up in a court of law.
While it is primarily deployed against Palestinians, it is also used against extremist Jewish Israelis, a point of contention for many far-right lawmakers.
The detentions must be renewed by a military court every six months, and Palestinian prisoners can remain in jail for years under the mechanism. Some resort to life-threatening hunger strikes to draw attention to their detentions.
In the past, the government has argued that administrative detention is a tool that helps keep dangerous terrorists off the streets and allows the government to hold suspects without divulging sensitive intelligence, although critics argue that the policy denies prisoners due process.
According to the Walla news outlet, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar’s office sent a letter to a number of government officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s military secretaries, in which he stated that banning the measure for Israelis “will result in an immediate, severe, and serious harm to the security of the state” in cases where there is clear information that a suspect may carry out a terror attack.
In his argument against employing the use of administrative detention against Israeli citizens, Rothman wrote that Israel’s “first obligation is to its citizens, their security, peace and freedom, and the procedural rights intended to serve these substantive rights must be preserved for them as much as possible.
“Therefore, the bill states that Israeli citizens cannot be detained in administrative detention unless the Defense Ministry has reasonable grounds to believe that this person is a member of a terrorist organization and aims to harm the very existence of the state or commit acts of terrorism against its citizens.”
Speaking to Walla, an anonymous security official charged that Rothman was seeking only to prevent the use of administrative detention against Israeli Jews “to flatter his voter base and the seven Jewish administrative detainees,” but said it would also “severely limit the Shin Bet’s ability to thwart Palestinian terrorism.”
The outlet cited Shin Bet sources as arguing it would be impossible to enforce such a law for Israelis and not for Palestinians. They did not offer an explanation, but appeared to be indicating it could be legally problematic.