As the last Israeli soldiers left the Gaza Strip, the Israeli commander of the army there signed an order ending the military law that Israel implemented in the Strip since 1967, Israeli sources reported.
Israel still insists that it won’t release the Palestinian prisoners who are originally from Gaza, in violation of the Geneva Convention.
Article number 77 of the Geneva Convention obliges the occupying force [Israel in this case] to transfer the prisoners to the authority that takes over the evacuated territories or to release them.
This issue, according to Israeli sources, was debated among Israeli legal officials, including the Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and other Ministry of Justice officials. They decided to keep hundreds of these prisoners who in jail, some of them under administrative detention.
Administrative detention is a military order which the detainee spends some time in jail without charges or court. Terms of the detention varies and can be renewed at any time.
Recently, Israel released three of five administrative detainees whoa re Gaza Strip residents, following the end of the Israeli military rule in Gaza.
The other two will be facing civil charges and will be transferred to the civil judicial system instead of the military.
Israeli officials in the ministry of justice claimed that Israel has indicting evidence against the two, and that they will be regarded as ‘illegal warriors’ which means that they will not be regarded as Prisoners of War.
Tamar Peleg, an Israeli lawyer, said after the end of the military rule on Gaza, administrative detention will be invalid for those residents of Gaza Strip, therefore, they should be released.
Israel invented the issue of illegal warriors when it had to keep 13 Lebanese prisoners of war in its custody to use them as bargaining card to get information on the fate of the Israeli navigator Ron Arad who was lost in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
