ISRAEL arrested 543 Palestinian children last year, a majority of them from the occupied city of Jerusalem, rights lawyer Abdel Nasser Farwana reported today.

He said the children had been held in poor conditions, many having been tortured, and subjected to arbitrary detention and unfair trials, in violation of international law.

About 180 children remain behind bars in Israeli prisons and detention centres, Mr Farwana said.

“The targeting and arrest of Palestinian children has been a constant Israeli policy since the beginning of the occupation which continued without interruption throughout the past long decades, accompanied by many grave violations and terrible crimes aimed at distorting the children’s reality, destroying their future and negatively affecting their future orientations,” he said.

The human rights lawyer said that the targeting of children had continued despite the coronavirus pandemic, which has been used as a pretext to block visits by parents and other family members.

No extra measures had been taken to protect the youngsters from the spread of the disease, which has claimed a number of Palestinian lives in Israeli jails, Mr Farwana said.

He explained that the Israeli Knesset has approved several unjust laws over the past few years targeting Palestinian minors to facilitate their arrest and trial, such as a law that enables Israeli authorities to imprison children from the age of 12, and a law establishing a minimum prison sentence of three years for those who throw stones at Israeli occupation forces and vehicles.

“Israeli leaders must be held accountable for their criminal practices,” he said.

Five Palestinian minors said they had been severely beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers and interrogators during detention, the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs reported today.

One of the minors, 17-year-old Mustafa Salameh, said he had been beaten unconscious with rifle butts and bundled into a jeep, coming round in the Jalama detention centre, where he was interrogated for 23 days.

According to a joint report by the Palestinian Prisoners Club, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, 4,634 Palestinians were arrested last year.

Israeli occupation courts issued five life sentences, bringing the number of prisoners facing life imprisonment to 543, the report said.

Over the course of 2020, Israeli authorities “escalated their arbitrary arrests of Palestinian minors and women and subjected them to various methods of torture during and after arrest” a statement by the non-governmental organisations said.