Ramallah, West Bank_ Human rights and advocacy groups say that there are over 4500 Palestinians are currently incarcerated in Israel, among them 41 women and 140 minors less than 18 years of age.
Palestinians in Israeli occupied territories are commemorating the Palestinian Prisoner’s Day on 17 April. Advocacy groups said in a joint statement on this occasion that Israel has detained 1400 Palestinians since the start of this year, among them 230 minors and 39 women, while it issued 280 administrative detention orders bringing the total number of Palestinians held in administrative detention without charge or trial to 440.
The groups include the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission, the Prisoners Society, Hurriyat, and Wadi Hilweh Information Center.
Occupied East Jerusalem had the highest number of arbitrary detentions since January of this year and reached 500 people, among them 144 minors and 28 women, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
The groups said 25 Palestinians arrested and sentenced to more than 30 years since before the signing of the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1993 remain behind bars despite the fact that they should have been released as far back as 2014 in a US-brokered deal aimed at restarting the stalled peace negotiations, which Israel has reneged on, WAFA added.
In addition, 543 Palestinians have been sentenced to one or more life terms, one of them, Abdullah Barghouti, is sentenced to 67 life terms.
The Palestinian National Council, the highest decision-making body in the PLO, declared in 1974 that April 17 of every year will be marked as the Palestinian Prisoner’s Day during which activities will be held in support of the freedom fighters imprisoned by Israel and to demand their freedom.