Nearly five hundred of the total are locked up under the administrative detention policy, according to the report, which was prepared by the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Commission, the Palestinian Prisoners Society, the Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association and the Information Center of Wadi Hilweh.

The so-called administrative detention has been criticized by the UN and human rights groups, as it is used by Israel to arrest Palestinians for renewable intervals that typically range from three to six months on the basis of undisclosed evidence that even the defendant’s lawyer is prohibited from seeing.

The statement highlights that the Tel Aviv security forces arrested 504 Palestinians in January, including 54 minors and six women.

Tension increased in the aforementioned prisons since September 2021, following the escape of six Palestinians from the maximum security prison of Gilboa.

Although they were caught after an extensive manhunt, Tel Aviv officials applied numerous punitive measures against the rest of the detainees, sparking clashes and strikes at various facilities.

“There is an blowout in the prisons due to the repudiation of the occupation authorities to the agreements they made with the leaders of the prisoners,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said a few days ago.

pgh/llp/acl/rob