The ministry said on Wednesday that about 500 of the above-mentioned figure were detained in the city of al-Khalil (Hebron) in the occupied West Bank, Maan news agency reported.
PA Detainees' Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe said the high number reflected the Israeli policy to systematically pursue children, particularly in the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem), where children were often put under house arrest.
According to the report, prisoners were routinely kept in solitary confinement in cells, which resembled graves. Some prisoners, including Hassan Salameh and Ahmad al-Mughrabi, have been spending more than eight years in such inhumane conditions.
The Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet ordered 12 Palestinian prisoners to serve long sentences in solitary confinement, the report said.
Sleep deprivation, threats of harming family members and humiliation are among the methods commonly employed by Israeli interrogators. Other techniques include tying prisoners for long hours to a chair with their hands behind the back and keeping them for long periods in unsanitary cells.
Every year, hundreds of Palestinian children are arrested and then interrogated with no lawyer or family member present, prosecuted, and sentenced.
AGB/HRF