Central Command commander Maj. Gen. Avi Blot has recently issued an unusual wave of administrative restriction orders against settlement activists, some of them married men and fathers. The orders require months of full house arrest and impose additional burdens, including reporting to a police station every day. Critics called them “crushing and inhumane orders that have become a tool of punishment.”
The article says the current wave is exceptional both because of the severity of the restrictions and because of who was targeted. Among those named are family men, a yeshiva student from a farm, and two other activists who became engaged only days earlier and are now unable even to hold their weddings. The piece notes that about a year and a half ago Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered an end to the use of administrative detention orders against settlers under his authority, but Blot still retains authority to issue other administrative orders, which he has reportedly used more and more in recent times.
One of the orders was issued against Tal Yinon Dardik, a married father of three who manages the sheep farm in Kfar Tarfon in Binyamin. He is required to stay for the next six months in the home of his mother-in-law, a widow who is hearing-impaired, and he said through lawyers from the Honenu organization that she had never agreed to this and cannot accommodate more people in the house. Another order was handed to Elishev Baruchi, a yeshiva student from the Havat Hesed LeAvraham farm in Har Hatzor, Binyamin, where he studied and worked at what the article describes as a legal, regulated place. He received four months of full house arrest.
Additional orders were served in recent days on Moshe Goldis, a shepherd in his early 20s from Givat Mekane Avraham who was recently injured in an Arab attack in grazing lands, and on Malachi Lehongdim, a 21-year-old from Givat Tel Talpiyot. Both were placed under full house arrest for six months. Goldis received his order a day after his engagement, and Lehongdim received his a few days after his, leaving both unable to prepare for their weddings, book a hall, or even sign a rental contract because they cannot leave home for such tasks.
Baruchi said he was shocked to receive the order “without any warning” and described it as a sweeping restriction on his freedom with no chance to defend himself. He argued that administrative orders, originally meant as a preventive tool against ticking bombs, have become “mass punishment” against lawful activity that the security establishment dislikes. The IDF responded that such orders are signed only after a Shin Bet recommendation based on intelligence and evidentiary material, are reviewed carefully by the military commander, and are subject to judicial review. The army said the tool is effective in combating nationalist crime and that affected individuals may submit requests for individual review.
