SI | STOP-Imperialism.com

Israeli military forces have reportedly arrested 6,489 Palestinians, including 140 women and 1,063 minors, during separate operations across the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip throughout the current year.

The Commission for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoner Affairs, in a statement released on Saturday, announced that six Palestinian lawmakers and 38 journalists were rounded up in 2018.

The statement added that Israeli authorities had issued 988 administrative detention orders during the mentioned period.

The commission highlighted that figures showed that the sweeping majority of Palestinians arrested this year were from the West Bank, while only 5 percent were from the Gaza Strip.  

The statement came on the same day that Israeli forces raided several homes in the northern West Bank village of Faqqu'a, and detained a Palestinian man.

Palestine’s official news agency WAFA reported that Israeli soldiers arrested Yasser Jamil Abu Khamis after violently ransacking his home.

The troopers also stormed the homes of his brothers, Mohammad and Loay, as well as of his father’s. There were no reports of detentions there.

More than 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly held at Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have apparently been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention, a policy under which Palestinian inmates are kept in Israeli detention facilities without trial or charge.

Some Palestinian prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to eleven years.

Palestinian inmates regularly stage hunger strikes in protest at the administrative detention policy and their harsh prison conditions in Israeli jails.

According to reports, at least 13 Palestinian lawmakers are currently imprisoned in Israeli detention facilities. Nine of them are being held without trial under administrative detention.