The Shin Bet and the IDF have released 50 Gazan detainees, including the director of Shifa Hospital, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, who has been kept in administrative detention in Israel since November 23.
Although Hamas was using Shifa Hospital as a terror base and as a location to conceal kidnapped hostages, no concrete proof was ever publicly produced to suggest that Abu Salmiya was directly involved in any of this.
Abu Salmiya's questioning
Back in November, a senior IDF source told The Jerusalem Post that Abu Salmiya had given suspicious answers when questioned about what he knew regarding Hamas’s systematic usage of his hospital. However, suspicious answers without evidence cannot usually be used to hold someone in administrative detention for over seven months.
Abu Salmiya had three hearings before the courts, the last of which was made quasi-public in December 2023.
Sources in December 2023 told the Post that he had a hearing before an unidentified Israeli civilian magistrate’s court via a video conference in which his detention was extended. The same process recurred at some unspecified time during the spring of this year.
There have been no updates about his status since November-December 2023, with legal and security sources merely saying that cases are taking a long time due to the ongoing war and the massive number of detainees.
Further, there was never a specific explanation as to why an indictment of Abu Salmiya could not be produced after several months.
Israel has not been releasing detainee numbers, but the Post estimates that likely more than 4,000 Gazans have been arrested, with an additional 4,100 West Bank Palestinians being detained as well, based on the IDF’s announcements over time.
Abu Salmiya was previously being probed by the Shin Bet under the current war emergency regulations in relation to having possible criminal ties to Hamas or other terrorists and in connection to the war.
As part of those regulations, Abu Salmiya had been prevented from meeting with a lawyer for at least a number of weeks.
Though sources did not identify the civilian court he was at, traditionally, the Beersheba courts have handled a variety of Gazan terrorist cases.
For weeks in November, the Post had only been clued into the fact that Abu Salmiya may still be in Shin Bet custody based on informal hints made by some sources, with the IDF’s legal division, the Shin Bet, the Justice Ministry, and the Israel Police all declining to comment on the issue on the record.
Under standard rules in Israeli civilian courts, the state must generally file an indictment within a certain number of days or, in exceptional circumstances, within a few weeks in order to justify keeping a suspect in detention.
Upon his return to Gaza, Abu Salmiya said, “The situation in the prison is tragic and very difficult. There must be a firm word from the resistance and the Arab people for the release of the prisoners.”
Prior to the IDF’s invasion of Shifa Hospital in November, Hamas terrorists murdered hostage Noa Marciano in the hospital’s area.
Documentation published at the time by Israel showed Hamas terrorists taking two hostages, a Nepali citizen and a Thai citizen, into Shifa Hospital, with one of them wounded and being led to a hospital bed while the other was walking.
The IDF reinvaded Shifa Hospital in March, but by then, Abu Salmiya had been in detention for several months and certainly could not be charged with anything related to Hamas’s more blatant terrorist activities during that period.
In contrast, the IDF allowed the vast majority of Hamas’s fighters to escape Shifa in November when thousands of civilians fled the area.
Opposition politicians and government ministers traded accusations on Monday about who was responsible for Abu Salmiya’s release and the release of dozens of other Gazan detainees.
The government, the Shin Bet, and the IDF have already released several hundred Gazan detainees periodically, over many months, generally with no announcement and in the middle of the night.
The process embarrassed government right-wing ministers and so they have blamed it on the Shin Bet, though the government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have authority over the Shin Bet.
The Shin Bet has not yet responded but it has been engulfed by political accusations since October 7, made by Netanyahu and his allies, who have tried to blame any security failure on it and the IDF to avoid blame.
Netanyahu put out a statement that he did not know who was being released and also blamed detainee releases on the High Court of Justice, which is also, importantly, bound by Knesset laws.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also said that he did not know which detainees would be released. However, he too should know this by virtue of his governmental position.
The agency’s administrative detention practices are controversial worldwide.
To reiterate, Israeli law places limitations on how long someone can be held without bringing them to trial and it has standards regarding the procurement of evidence that must be met.
The government could lower those standards if it wanted to, but in the meantime, the Shin Bet is bound by existing laws – laws that are passed by the Knesset itself.