Araweelo News Network
An Israeli soldier tries to arrest a Palestinian boy during an anti-settlement protest in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Salih near Ramallah on August 28, 2015.
TelAviv(ANN)-least 300 Palestinian children have been arrested by Israeli forces since the beginning of the year, says the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
The rights group released the figures in a report that documented a series of violent raids in which Palestinian children were detained, beaten and abused, the Middle East Monitor reported on Wednesday.
Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian boy in the occupied West Bank. (file photo)
The Palestinian advocacy group’s report, which was released to mark Palestinian Children’s Day, slammed the Tel Aviv regime for its atrocities against children all over the occupied Palestinian territories.
It also called on the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and other international human rights groups to pay more attention to the plight of Palestinian children.
The Palestinian Ministry of Culture has also called on the global community to help protect the children of Palestine, which make up 45.8 percent of its total population.
It stressed that Israel’s crackdown on children is “clear-cut proof” that Tel Aviv has started a “real war” on Palestinian children, who are the “guardians of the future.”
The ministry noted that Israel must be brought to justice over its “blatant unending crimes against Palestinian children that have continued unabated for decades.”
More than 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly held in Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have apparently been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention, which is 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 11 years.
The occupied Palestinian territories have witnessed heightened tensions ever since Israel imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem al-Quds in August 2015.