Israeli authorities issued administrative detention orders against 17 Palestinians, placing them in jail without charge or trial, Sunday reported the Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS). While four out the17 detainees received renewed administrative detention orders after spending years in jail without charge or trial, the remaining 13 received first-time orders Administrative detention is the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence for up to six month periods, indefinitely renewable by Israeli military courts. The Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem, says that international law stipulates that administrative detention may be exercised only in very exceptional cases. Nevertheless, Israeli authorities routinely employ administrative detention on thousands of Palestinians. Human rights groups have long accused Israel of using administrative detention regularly as a form of collective punishment and mass detention of Palestinians, and that it frequently uses this form of detention when it fails to obtain confessions in interrogations of Palestinian detainees. Addameer human rights association stated "Administrative detention in the OPT is ordered by a military commander and grounded on "security reasons." Detainees are held without trial and without being told the evidence against them. In most cases, they are simply informed that there is 'secret evidence' against them and that they are being held for security reasons." Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy, which violates international law. Three days ago, the United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance and Development Aid, Robert Piper, expressed grave concern over Israel's continued practice of administrative detention, without charge or trial. "I am deeply concerned about the continued practice of administrative detention in Israeli jails and detention centers," stated the UN official in a statement issued by Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) on Tuesday. "In particular, I am alarmed by the rapidly deteriorating health of Palestinian administrative detainee, Mohammed Al-Qiq, who is on hunger strike in protest against the arbitrary nature of his detention and ill-treatment."
