Administrative detention dodged a bullet on Tuesday [February 21]. On that day, Israel’s High Court of Justice held an emergency hearing and decided to approve a settlement between the government and the attorneys of Khader ‘Adnan, an administrative detainee who was on day 67 of his hunger strike. The decision was unprecedented: for the first time in the history of administrative detention, the government pledged not to prolong it. ‘Adnan decided to end his hunger strike later that day; he had won.

Originally, the court decided to hold the hearing two days later, on Thursday. That would have been day 69 of ‘Adnan’s hunger strike, coming too close to the threshold of 70 days of hunger, from which there is no recovery, only certain death. Someone in the government apparently decided this was courting PR disaster, and the court convened two days ahead of time, and saved ‘Adnan’s life.

Legally, administrative detention is a relic of the British Mandate, which ended in May 1948 but many of whose laws are still in force in Israel. Specifically, it is a part of the 1945 Emergency Acts. These provisions, enacted by the British at the height of the Hebrew resistance movement (naturally, the British considered its members to be terrorists, and hanged some dozen of them), granted military commanders in the field sweeping and draconian powers. According to them, for instance, a military commander can order the destruction of a house if he believes that one of the residents was supportive in any way of a terrorist act. The IDF used this power, until recent years, to destroy the houses of the families of Palestinian terrorists — even when the attackers themselves were dead. Israel codified it into its own laws in 1979.

But what is it? It is an arrest of an individual, without the need for a formal trial. An official arrests the individual, and he never sees the evidence against him, and thus cannot challenge it. Often, the detainee does not even know what he is suspected of. The Israeli security forces often claim — a claim which by its nature cannot be verified or refuted — that the detention is the result of secret intelligence against the detainee, which cannot be disclosed for fear of exposing intelligence sources. While it has been used against both Palestinians and Jews, its powers within Israel and in the Occupied Territories are different.