880 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel last month

MOSCOW, (Sputnik) – About 880 Palestinian were detained by the Israeli security forces in July, Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), advocating the rights of Palestinian nationals in Israeli jails, said Tuesday.

One of the NGOs, Addameer Prisoner Support, issued a statement, which was also signed by Palestinian Prisoners Club, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Human Rights Association and Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs. According to the rights groups, 144 children and 18 women were among the 880 Palestinians, detained by the Israeli forces.

“A total of 425 residents of Jerusalem were among those arrested last month,” the statement was quoted as saying by the Anadolu news agency.

Some of detentions resulted from the tensions around Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which is the third holiest site in Islam after it was equipped with metal detectors and surveillance video cameras to monitor its territory following deadly shooting at the site on July 14 that claimed the lives of two Israeli police officers. The measures led to violent clashes in Jerusalem and the West Bank and forced Palestine to suspend contacts with Israel over several Palestinian deaths.

On July 16, the NGOs published a joint press release, saying that 388 Palestinians, including 70 children and six women, were detained in June. As of the mid-July, the total number of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails reached nearly 6,300 people, with 300 of them being children.

Tensions between Israel and Palestine have continued to escalate throughout the years. Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state in the West Bank and aspire to the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territories it occupied after the Six-Day War in 1967.