Israel arrested almost 7,000 Palestinians during 2015

The PLO’s Palestinian Prisoners’ Committee (PPC) issued a report on Monday which revealed that the Israeli occupation authorities arrested 6,830 Palestinians during 2015, Al-Resalah newspaper has reported. This is an “unprecedented” rate of detention, it said, the like of which was not seen during the previous uprisings in 1987 and 2000. The PPC added that it is believed that all 6,830 of the prisoners experienced at least one kind of verbal or physical abuse.

According to the report, the detention rate this year is 12.7 per cent higher than that of the previous year despite the massive arrest campaign that followed the mysterious disappearance of three Israeli Jewish settlers in mid-2014. Most of the detentions take place in the occupied West Bank, from where 4,075 people were picked up; 2,353 of the detainees came from Jerusalem; the balance came from the Gaza Strip and were arrested either in their fishing vessels, along the territory’s eastern border or at the Erez Crossing.

The PPC recorded 2,179 arrests of minors aged between 11 and 18, an increase of 72.1 per cent on 2014. The Israelis also arrested 225 Palestinian women this year, a 100 per cent increase over last year, when 112 women were held.

The Israelis issued and renewed 650 administrative detention orders during 2015, more than half of them during the past three months, when more Palestinians were arrested than in the past 5 years combined. Administrative detention means that the Israel authorities detain individuals without charge or trial for an indefinite period.