At least 678 Palestinians have been detained by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank this year, 16 of them women, some of them minors. Almost none of the detentions led to charges. The pattern is the same over and over: settlers walk onto Palestinian land, attack whoever is there, and then soldiers show up a few minutes later and arrest the people who got attacked. The army's own rules say a detainee has to be handed to police within three hours. In practice people are held far longer, blindfolded and zip-tied, sometimes left outside in the cold without food or water. One 14-year-old sat in a military vehicle with the windows open for two days.
The legal basis for all of this is the army's "delay" authority, which was written for questioning suspects. Four Israeli human rights groups say it has turned into routine intimidation, a way to clear shepherds and farmers off their land. They wrote to the military advocate general and the IDF commander responsible. Nobody replied. So they petitioned the High Court, which hears the case today. The state's answer, in essence: yes, some soldiers may have broken the rules, but we clarified the rules, so the case is moot. On the ground, nothing has changed.
Hebrew https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2026-10-19/ty-article-magazine/.premium/000001a1-4e4f-d700-a7f5-ffdf0cd70000 (archive https://archive.ph/LCAWS)
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