The young Israelis arrested last week on suspicion of their involvement in Jewish extremist activities in the West Bank have been jailed without trial. Israeli law enforcement have concluded its investigation on Meir Ettinger, Eviatar Slonim, and Mordechai Meir, who were all detained last week for their suspected connection with “price tag” arson attacks inflicted on Palestinian and Christian property.
Israeli authorities have concluded their questioning and have decided to make use of Israel’s security cabinets recent injunction called “administrative detention,” which enables authorities to indefinitely hold its citizens without trial. The three Israelis are believed to head an extremist organization called the “hilltop youth,” a group of settlers who are violently opposed to the Palestinian claim to the Occupied Territories.
According to Haaretz, Ettinger and Slonim were brought to the Central District Court on Tuesday morning to have their “detention without trial approved… They are entitled to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.”
At the start of August, following the murder of a Palestinian baby boy at the hands of Jewish extremists, the Israeli Security cabinet authorized the use of administrative detention without trial on citizens suspected of extremism. The measure was previously exclusive to Palestinian terrorism suspects, with the initial measure put in place in 1979. According to Haaretz, one of the initial measure’s conditions is that detainees must be “provided with the best conditions possible” in their prisons. They are also allowed to receive visits from family and have access to lawyers “as they wish.”
Ettinger, Salom and Meir will all be kept in separate prisons for the duration of their, currently indefinite, stay.
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Jas Chana is a former intern at Tablet.
