Israel has detained kidnapped and jailed about one million Palestinian citizens since it emerged in 1948 as an occupying power in Palestine according to Palestinian official estimate.
This came in a joint statistical report released recently on the occasion of “the Palestinian Prisoner Day” by the Palestinian Commission for Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs the Palestinian Prisoner Society and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
According to their statistics there are currently about 6500 prisoners in Israeli jails including some 57 women and minor girls and 300 children.
They said that the years of the Palestinians intifadas (uprisings) in 1987 and 2000 were ones of the most difficult times in the history of the Palestinian people during which tens of thousands of them were exposed to arbitrary mass arrests.
During al-Aqsa Intifada which started on September 28 2000 official institutions and human rights groups recorded the occurrence of 100000 arrests against Palestinian citizens.
The detainees at the time included nearly 15000 children under age 18 as well as 1500 women and 70 lawmakers and ministers.
About 27000 Palestinian internees received administrative detention verdicts with no indictment or trial during the 2000 intifada the report stated. Many of those arbitrary jail orders were issued for the first time against new detainees and the rest were extensions against prisoners already in administrative detention.
Currently the number of administrative detainees in Israeli jails amounts to about 500 Palestinians including 13 lawmakers.
