On October 12, in the West Bank village of Wadi al-Seeq, Israeli soldiers and settlers detained three Palestinians and spent hours abusing them. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Israelis stripped the detainees down to their underwear, blindfolded and photographed them, beat them with knives and an iron pipe, put out cigarettes on their bodies, and even urinated on them. One of the detainees described the experience as “Abu Ghraib with the [Israeli] army.”
The Israeli military said that it is investigating the incident, but that horrifying account did not occur in a vacuum. Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Palestinians in the West Bank have been victimized by a surge in violence perpetrated by both Israeli soldiers and settlers.
One of the major sources of that escalation is a tool of repression that Israel has long deployed against Palestinians and has used even more aggressively in recent weeks: administrative detention, a practice that allows Israel to jail Palestinians indefinitely without charge or trial.
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The three Palestinians who were abused in Wadi al-Seeq were released on the same day they were detained and subsequently sent to the hospital. But many of Israel’s detainees get locked up for months, or even years, without ever being charged with a crime.
And while Israel argues that this is a lawful preventative security measure — allowing it to target people for a range of political activity, including speech and nonviolent protest — human rights groups have deemed Israel’s use of administrative detention a blatant violation of international law.
Even beyond administrative detention, when charges are brought against Palestinians in the West Bank, they are almost always tried in military courts that have a near-perfect conviction rate. (By contrast, Israelis are usually tried in civil court.) Palestinians, in other words, are sent to a trapdoor instead…
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