RAMALLAH, January 11, 2016 (WAFA) – Israeli authorities Monday issued administrative detention orders against 34 Palestinian detainees, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).

Fourteen of the detainees received administrative detention orders for the first time, whereas the remaining 20 received renewed administrative orders.

There are more than 500 Palestinian prisoners being held under administrative detention, a controversial Israeli practice that allows detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for up to sex-month intervals that can be renewed indefinitely.

Israeli officials claim the practice is an essential tool in preventing attacks and protecting sensitive intelligence, but it has been strongly criticized by the international community as well as by both Israeli and Palestinian rights groups.

The Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, said international law stipulates that administrative detention may be exercised only in very exceptional cases. Nevertheless, Israeli authorities routinely employ administrative detention on thousands of Palestinians.

Israel uses administrative detention regularly as a form of collective punishment and mass detention of Palestinians, and frequently uses administrative detention when it fails to obtain confessions in interrogations of Palestinian detainees.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy, which violates international law.

Following are the names of the 34 detainees who received administrative detention orders:

M.N./T.R.