Court rejects appeal for suspected settler to serve house arrest at mother-in-law’s West Bank home

“The starting point in the proceeding before me is that the respondent poses a danger which justifies full house arrest,” Rubin wrote, noting that Dardik had not challenged that finding as part of the appeal before the District Court.

Dardik is suspected of involvement in attacks against Palestinians and other nationalist-motivated offenses, including a suspected attack in March. With insufficient evidence at the time to bring criminal charges over the suspected nationalist offenses, Bluth issued the administrative order on June 9 following a Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) recommendation.

The order required Dardik to remain under full house arrest for six months at his mother-in-law’s home in Adei Ad. Dardik argued that he could not comply because she refused to allow him to stay there. He nevertheless did not comply with the order while his appeal was pending, and prosecutors subsequently charged him with six counts of violating a lawful order.

Dardik remains in custody in that separate criminal case after failing to propose an alternative and refusing to undertake to comply with the military order, according to Sunday’s ruling.

Rubin stressed that the appeal before him did not concern whether Dardik should remain detained in the criminal proceedings, saying that question must be decided separately by the court handling that case.

The military appeals committee ruled on July 26 that intelligence presented to it supported the assessment that Dardik posed a danger to security in the area and justified both the administrative order and full house arrest.

It found, however, that the military commander could not compel a third party to house Dardik against that person’s wishes, and therefore struck only the provision requiring him to remain at his mother-in-law’s home.

Bluth did not appeal that finding. Instead, he argued that after removing the provision, the committee should itself have imposed replacement conditions rather than sending the matter back to the military commander to issue new ones.

Rubin rejected that argument, finding that the committee had the authority to choose either course and that its decision to leave new restrictions to Bluth did not justify the District Court’s intervention.

The court noted that several alternatives had already been discussed, including house arrest at another approved location, restrictions within a wider defined area under electronic monitoring, and residence at Dardik’s parents’ home. The sides had failed to agree on an alternative.

Rubin said Bluth could now set new conditions, which Dardik would in turn be entitled to challenge before the military appeals committee. He also raised the possibility of requiring Dardik to stay at the home of another person who consented to host him, or imposing geographically defined restrictions under electronic monitoring.

The case comes amid a broader dispute between Katz and Bluth over the military’s use of administrative restrictions against Jewish extremists suspected of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. In July, Katz had pushed back against Bluth’s use of restriction orders, after the defense minister had already ended the use of administrative detention against Jewish suspects.

Katz has taken a personal interest in Dardik’s case, visiting him in detention and publicly criticizing the restriction order. Last week, during an interview on Channel 14, Katz said he would remove Bluth from his position, saying the decision to appeal the military committee’s ruling had been taken contrary to his position. Katz later backed away from the threat.

Sunday’s judgment, however, upheld the central security assessment underlying Bluth’s action.

Rubin wrote that the original decision to issue the order was “justified, proportionate and reasonable,” and that the finding that Dardik posed a danger to security in the area remained in force.