Hana Al Shalabi, 27, Yehiya’s daughter, has been languishing in Israeli administrative detention for over two years - she is the longest serving Palestinian female political prisoner in administrative detention.

According to her lawyer, the young woman from Jenin in the northern West Bank does not know why Israeli soldiers arrested her several years ago, nor does she know how long they will keep her in jail, or what they will charge her with.

Shalabi, like nearly 200 other Palestinian prisoners, is being held in Hasharon prison. A senior Israeli military officer has just renewed the administrative detention order against her for the fourth time.

The Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) administrative detention policy allows Palestinian political prisoners to be held for six months without trial or charges being brought against them. The detention order can be renewed every six months.

The policy of administrative detention is used by the IDF when they have ‘classified and secret’ information against Palestinian prisoners. Both the prisoner and their lawyer are forbidden from seeing the classified information, and therefore are unable to challenge accusations or to question those who made the accusations.

The administrative detention policy is used when Israeli authorities have ‘secret witnesses’, such as Palestinian collaborators, or has obtained intelligence in a clandestine manner which would not stand up in an Israeli civilian court - but are par for the course in Israeli military courts.

It’s a primitive and racist way to hold a trial and no civilised country in the world uses such methods. Needless to say Israel’s legal system could never do this to an Israeli Jew. Even the Israeli settlers who carry out acts of terror against Palestinians in the West Bank are not treated in this manner, Qadura Fares, the president of the Palestinian Society Prisoners’ Club in Ramallah, told IPS.