Palestinians ask court to halt alleged spike in unlawful detentions by troops |
Saeed Awad, a 55-year-old resident of the village of Abu Shaban in the South Hebron Hills, says he has been detained by soldiers six times this year alone.
According to Awad, in each of the six cases, soldiers grabbed him from near his home and took him, blindfolded and handcuffed, to a nearby military base in the settlement of Susya. There, he said, he was held for hours, at times overnight, at the end of which he was released without charges and without having even been questioned.
Because he was detained and not arrested, soldiers were not required to produce a warrant or specify an accusation against him. Under the military’s own procedures, according to human rights groups, such detentions are supposed to last no longer than six hours, and the detainee is supposed to remain at the location where he was encountered, not transported to a base.
Awad is one of five Palestinians who are now petitioning the High Court over what they say are unlawful detentions they have been subjected to in recent months, demanding an end to the practice amid what activists say is a sharp uptick in such cases.
Also party to the case, filed May 14, are several rights groups, including HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and the Human Rights Defenders Fund.
The court has ordered the military to respond to the petition by June 28.
In response to a query from The Times of Israel, the IDF said that “the petition has been received and is being handled by the relevant authorities in the IDF. A response to the petition will be submitted as customary.”
According to the Human Rights Defenders Fund, the detainment phenomenon existed previously on a smaller scale, but began ramping up significantly in November.
From mid-November to mid-May, the group said it documented 159 reports of Palestinian detentions across the West Bank allegedly violating military procedures.
The organizations petitioning the court say they do not know what is behind the rise, but note that it began around the olive harvest season, a period that often sees heightened friction between Israeli settlers and Palestinians attempting to access groves of trees.
According to the groups, most of the detentions occur in Area C of the West Bank, where Israel maintains full security and civilian control.
Oneg Ben David, an activist with the Human Rights Defenders Fund who works closely with Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills, said a routine pattern had developed in the area since the start of 2026.
“In these detentions they are not taken for questioning. They spend the night at a military base while blindfolded, and they abuse them — beat them, humiliate them,” she said. “It has become systematic, several detentions a day.”
Attorney Hila Sharon, who filed the petition on behalf of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said that in the three days following the filing of the petition, two of the five petitioners were detained again.
One of them, she said, was........