The HAARETZ editorial transmitted below shines a light on the Israeli practice of "administrative detention" of Palestinians.
The editorial states: "Detention without charges or trial is an instrument used only by dictatorships."
Fair enough, but, in this context, it may be worth noting that almost all of the roughly 780 unfortunates who have been held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, including many of the 31 who remain, have been detained without charges or trial.
Finding international conventions according rights to prisoners of war inconvenient, the U.S. government created a new status previously unknown to international law -- "enemy combatants", to whom no rights whatsoever were accorded.
Finding international law as a whole inconvenient, the U.S. government created the new and eminently vague and selective concept of a "rules-based international order".
The "unbreakable bond" between Israel and the United States may indeed be based upon "shared values" -- just not the alleged values that they claim to hold dear.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-04-02/ty-article/israel-detains-767-arabs-with-no-trial-this-must-stop/00000187-3e88-db91-adcf-3f9f29740000
Israel Detains 967 Arabs With No Trial. This Must Stop
Israel is currently holding 971 people in administrative detention – a 20-year high. All but four of them, 967, are West Bank Palestinians, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem or Arab citizens of Israel.
Administrative detainees are people who were arrested without the suspicions against them being detailed, without charges being filed and without the benefit of a trial based on evidence. Although the number of administrative detainees skyrocketed over the past year, the total number of Palestinians incarcerated in Israel, so-called security prisoners, did not. The obvious conclusion is that it is easier and more convenient for Israel to detain Palestinians without conducting legal proceedings against them.
There is almost no judicial oversight of administrative detention in Israel: A low-ranking military judge examines intelligence submitted to him in writing by the state only. Israel likes to boast of its high level of judicial review, but data provided by the military at the request of Haaretz proved otherwise: Military courts approved 90 percent of the administrative detention orders. The judges in uniform cancel only 1 percent of the orders. The reason for this is simple, as a former legal adviser to the Shin Bet told Haaretz: The judges prefer not to rule against the defense establishment. The result is that if the Shin Bet says a person should remain in detention, he will remain in detention – and without knowing why.
This is not the only deterioration that occurred in the past year: Shamelessly and without pretext, the Israel Prison Service significantly reduced its transparency regarding administrative detainees. In the past, the agency gave not only the total number of people in custody but also a breakdown by age, sex and residency. But it refused to provide this information to Haaretz in recent weeks despite numerous requests.
Unusually, among the current administrative detainees are four Jews from the radical right. While there is no criticism in Israel of the detention without charges of nearly 1,000 Palestinians, the Jewish detainees have a strong lobby: Last week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir met with the four detainees’ parents and said, in a statement he issued later: “It is not democratic to arrest a person and throw him in prison without evidence and without a trial.” Ben-Gvir added that he would try to persuade the relevant authorities to release them. The right-wing criticism of administrative detentions shows once again the unbearable hypocrisy of those who demand rights for only one side, and dare to call themselves second-class citizens.
Detention without charges or trial is an instrument used only by dictatorships. The latest figures prove unequivocally: The tool that is supposed to be reserved for only the most exceptional cases has become a modus operandi of Israeli rule in the territories. The administrative detainees must be either prosecuted or released.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.