Israeli occupation forces have detained up to 4,700 Palestinian citizens, including 550 children and 118, over the past year, a human rights group has revealed.

In its annual report on Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, the Palestinian Prisoners Centre for Prisoners’ Studies stressed that arbitrary arrest campaigns had been used as a collective punishment against the Palestinian people.

Last year has been the worst for Palestinian detainees in regard to health care inside Israeli prisons, the advocacy group reported.

By the end of 2020, 140 Palestinian detainees have contracted the coronavirus inside Israeli jails, the rights group continued, blaming the surge in virus infections on the Israeli prison administration’s failure to take preventative measures against the deadly virus.   

Over the last year, the Israeli occupation has continued its arbitrary and racist measures against Palestinian detainees in its prisons, imposed tight restrictions, and denied them of their basic rights, including access to health care and family visit.

According to the prisoners’ rights group, Jerusalem has seen nearly 42 per cent of the total number of arrests conducted by Israeli occupation troops over the past year, with approximately 2,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites detained, followed by Hebron, with about 700 Palestinians detained. 

At least 88 of the Palestinians detained by the Israeli occupation army during 2020 are from the Gaza Strip.

Last year, Israeli occupation forces abducted 550 Palestinian children, 52 of them under the age of 14.

Nine members of the Palestinian Legislative Council and 145 sick Palestinians and people with special needs were also detained by Israeli occupation troops in 2020.

Four Palestinian detainees have died due to a deliberate policy of medical negligence inside Israeli prisons, raising the total number of Palestinians who denied or were killed inside Israeli jails to 226. 

The rights group accused the Israeli occupation of exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic to impose further harsh measures against Palestinian detainees, including barring them from meeting with their families and lawyers and banning dozens of goods from being sold at prison canteens, including cleaning products and sanitisers.

The group, in addition, urged the World Health Organisation to immediately intervene to provide protection for Palestinian detainees against the coronavirus and offer them vaccination.

The rights group called on the Palestinian Authority to file a lawsuit against the Israeli occupation, prosecute its leader for their war crimes, including inflicting physical and psychological torture against Palestinian detainees, including women and children, and place pressure on it to abide by international humanitarian conventions.