A hostage and a prisoner is not the same thing under international law.
> Their courts have no jurisdiction over them
Israel is the occupying power. International law requires that an occupying power provide law & order, so it does have the authority to persecute people who commit crimes (although they are required to keep the laws the same as they were pre-occupation, with some exceptions).
They are also allowed to keep prisoners of war (although i am not sure if hamas counts as that as they are a non-state group). They are allowed to persecute war crimes that enemy combatants commit (as long as they give a fair trial)
> have no issue calling anyone a terrorist.
The phrase "terrorist" doesn't really have much meaning under international law. Israel is free to call its enemies dirty names if it wants, there isn't any rule against calling your enemies mean names.
The phrase terrorist is the pretense Israel uses to kidnap Palestinian children and use them as hostages. Over 800 last year. It's highly relevant. Israel's courts rubberstamp some of the hostage taking, while the rest are on administrative detention without charge or trial.
While i abhor the practise of long-term administrative detention as being fundamentally unjust, i don't think it would meet the definition of taking hostages under the geneva convention.
> Any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (hereinafter referred to as “hostage”) in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organisation, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage, commits the offence of taking of hostages
How is administrative detention an attempt by Israel an attempt "to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organisation, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage"
Like if they randomly started grabbing people up in order to trade them, it would very clearly meet the definition, but it doesn't seem like that is what happened.
They absolutely have grabbed people to trade them. The OP article mentions the trade. Every ceasefire in the history of this conflict has had a hostage exchange, or disingenuously "hostages for prisoners". They know it was coming and they kidnapped people for it.
Also more generally, they hold hostages to compel Palestinians to obey and not resist.
Do you have any evidence for the claim that they "have grabbed people to trade them"?
If true, (and the person was not a combatant) that would certainly count as taking a hostage, provided that was the primary reason they detained said person. However if they detained someone primarily for some other purpose and then traded them later, that is a different story.
> Also more generally, they hold hostages to compel Palestinians to obey and not resist.
If you mean they detained someone who was doing some action or intending to do some action in order to compel other people not to do similar things, that probably doesn't count.
If you mean they detained some random person that wasn't involved at all in order to compel someone else to do or not do something, that probably would count.
Administrative detention is functionally the same as hostage taking and we should call it as such. Just because an Israeli "court" puts a stamp on it doesn't make it any different.
> Just because an Israeli "court" puts a stamp on it doesn't make it any different.
That has nothing to do with why i don't think administrative detention constitutes hostage taking as defined by the geneva convention. Obviously if some hypothetical israeli court approved of hostage taking it would still not be ok.
> Their courts have no jurisdiction over them
Israel is the occupying power. International law requires that an occupying power provide law & order, so it does have the authority to persecute people who commit crimes (although they are required to keep the laws the same as they were pre-occupation, with some exceptions).
They are also allowed to keep prisoners of war (although i am not sure if hamas counts as that as they are a non-state group). They are allowed to persecute war crimes that enemy combatants commit (as long as they give a fair trial)
> have no issue calling anyone a terrorist.
The phrase "terrorist" doesn't really have much meaning under international law. Israel is free to call its enemies dirty names if it wants, there isn't any rule against calling your enemies mean names.