Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado; Photo credit: Honenu
Wednesday, March 10, 2021, 16:19 Approximately six weeks after it was signed, a warning prior to being issued an administrative order was served to a Yehuda and Shomron resident in his 20s, who is not aware of having any connection to a violent act. The warning, which had been signed in January, consisted solely of one vague paragraph and did not mention specific incidents. Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado sent a letter to the GOC of the Central Command, Major-General Tamir Yadai, requesting that he not sign the order and noting that the delay in serving the warning was a fundamental failure.
Yado wrote in his letter that, “no one disputes that an administrative order is issued to someone as a last resort, solely to prevent realization of virtually certain and significant damage to public security or public peace.” And further stated that if there had been an essential security need to issue the order then the warning would have been served immediately and so the six-week delay was irresponsible. However the delay could also indicate the lack of a security need to immediately issue the order, and despite that the warning was signed, which indicates irresponsibility with regards to human rights.
Either way, signing the warning and leaving it in a drawer for a month and a half indicates a failure concerning the extremely sensitive subject of administrative orders. In Yado’s opinion, the circumstances of the incident reflect a serious problem: “Over the past two and a half years, there has been dangerous burnout regarding the natural reluctance to issuing administrative orders. The dynamics described here prove this.”
Therefore Yado asked Major-General Yadai not to sign the order: “A warning that sat in a drawer for a month and a half cannot serve as the basis for issuing an order that will cause such great damage to an individual and his rights. The Major-General expressed a strong opinion about the orders, and in light of that statement and of the above-mentioned claims, we hope that you will refrain from signing the order.”
In reference to a statement by Major-General Tamir Yadai at a recent conference on hilltop youth that he had “Stalinesque powers” with regards to signing administrative orders, Yado noted that “a GOC who said, completely justifiably, that administrative orders are suited to Stalin, has been granted a good opportunity not to sign such an order and not to act in accordance with an image that he does not want to stick to him.”