Last Monday, Defense Minister Bennett signed an administrative arrest warrant for Elia Ben David, an Israeli citizen from the Galilee landscape, who is suspected of throwing stones at a Palestinian driver and injuring his head. Factors on the right were shocked by the decision, and pressed Bennett to abolish the decree. He recovered, and the following day, on Tuesday, converted the detention with release while evacuating the West Bank.

"The statement of the defense minister only clarifies the unbearable ease with which the GSS exerts disproportionate and unlawful and unjustified pressure on the defense minister to issue orders ... All the administrative orders that have been found, including exclusionary orders that have been issued, must be examined. All of this needs to be opened up in a sort of commission of inquiry that will examine in depth the conduct of the GSS in this aspect. That was the response of Attorney Adi Kedar, a member of the Hanouna organization, to Bennett's decision. And he was right.

Administrative arrests allow a person to be detained for six months, and may even extend this detention indefinitely for years without the need for indictment or trial. Israel inherited this dangerous tool from the mandatory government emergency regulations used to suppress Jewish underground organizations before the establishment of the state.

Menachem Begin was one of the biggest opponents of using this tool - although it exists in some other democratic countries, but is rusting it out of disuse. When members of the Haredi underground were arrested by such an order in 1951, Begin told Prime Minister and Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion: "The law you used is Nazi, it is tyrannical, it is immoral, and immoral law is also illegal. Therefore, your arrest is illegal. "

When he was elected prime minister, he acted to abolish administrative detentions, but contented himself with the fact that these detentions, instead of relying on mandatory regulations, depended on the existence of an emergency in Israel. Israel, as I recall, is in an emergency from May 19, 1948 to the present. In the West Bank, any commander authorized by the area commander may issue a warrant for administrative detention. In sovereign Israel, it is only the defense minister's right.

There are currently almost no Israeli administrative detainees, but in Israeli prisons, some 430 Palestinian administrative detainees sit without trial and have no idea of ​​their arrest. A democratic state cannot afford such numbers. The unbearable ease refers not only to the arrest of Jews. The proposal to re-examine the issue, and consequently - to put an end to the unbearable ease of using administrative arrests, does not only concern the Jewish stones from the Galilee landscape but the image of the state.