Australian citizen Evyatar Slonim jailed without charge in Israel extremism case

• Jewish terrorist or scapegoat for Israel?

​In a small cell in a high-security wing of Eshel Prison in the Israeli city of Beersheba, a dual Australian-Israeli citizen is detained without charge or trial.

Evyatar Slonim was just 18 when Israeli security forces caught him with a knife, housebreaking tools and a spray can, preparing, a court found, to commit crimes against Palestinians.

Evyatar Slonim, an Australian under administrative detention in Israel.

Now 23, Slonim is a veteran of interrogations by Israel's domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, often held for days without access to a lawyer, relying only on his stamina and right to silence.

He was previously arrested on suspicion of setting fire to a home in the Palestinian town of Khirbet Abu Falah in November 2014.

Meir Ettinger (left) and Evyatar Slonim, both in administrative detention in Israel for their alleged membership of Jewish extremist group The Revolt.Credit: EPA

Court documents seen by Fairfax Media indicate he was always eventually released without charge, although in March he was issued with an "administrative ban" preventing him from entering the occupied West Bank or Jerusalem.

But in early August, that all changed.

In a security sweep following the horrific firebombing of a house in the West Bank town of Duma in which three Palestinians - including an 18-month-old toddler - died and a five-year-old boy was severely burned, Slonim was arrested.

Although not specifically linked to the murders of Saad, Riham and Ali Dawabshe, he is now four months into a six-month period of "administrative detention" – jailed without charge and with no access to the allegations that led security services to hold him.

A child's burnt clothing and belongings can still be seen on the floor of the Dawabshe family home. Ali Dawabshe's name is written in Arabic on the wall.Credit: Ruth Pollard

Israel already holds hundreds of Palestinians in this kind of administrative detention, despite an international outcry from human rights groups, but it is unusual for it to take such punitive action against one of its own.

Accused by Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon of "involvement in activity by an extremist Jewish group", Slonim is one of three young men linked to a secretive movement known as The Revolt. The group's aim: to overthrow the State of Israel and replace it with a Jewish kingdom. Its method: committing violence against Palestinians, thereby creating chaos, which will draw in Israeli security forces and eventually lead to the collapse of the government.

Palestinian youths carry a mock coffin of Ali Dawabshe in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis.Credit: AP

Via his lawyer and his parents, who moved from Melbourne to Israel in 1989, Slonim insists he is innocent of any involvement in the arson attacks.

But Slonim and the small number of his contemporaries believed to have joined The Revolt are not alone in their violent actions against Palestinians.

Hebrew graffiti - "Revenge" - sprayed on the wall of the Dawabshe family home.Credit: Ruth Pollard

Many in Israel's settler movement have acted with impunity for years, veteran security officials admit, rarely ever brought to justice for the violent crimes they commit.

The former head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, describes the settler-dominated areas in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank as "a nation of Jewish law, of terror, of hatred against the other, or racism" where "law enforcement against Jews is disturbingly weak".

Writing on his Facebook page following the Duma arson attack, Mr Diskin, who stepped down as head of the Shin Bet in 2011, said: "In the 'State of Judea' there are different standards, different value systems, different approaches to democracy … and there are two legal systems. One that judges Jews (Israeli law) and one that judges Palestinians (martial law)."

Human Rights Watch found that when Palestinians attack settlers they are subject to a military justice system that finds 99.74 per cent of suspects guilty.

But when settlers attack Palestinians, police close 91 per cent of investigations without ever filing indictments.

These violent settlers are not just a "handful of crazed teens living on the fringes of Israeli society", the Israeli think tank Molad stated.

"In reality these supposedly individual acts are part of a much larger framework: they are the result of a policy carefully planned by functionaries from the very heart of the settler establishment and financed by the state."

Mr Yaalon told Army Radio this week that the firebombing attack that killed three members of the Dawabshe family was "clearly a Jewish attack that I am ashamed of".

He acknowledged the defence establishment knows the members of group behind the attack but said there was "not enough evidence against them".