RAMALLAH, March 28, 2016 (WAFA) – Israeli authorities Monday issued administrative detention orders against 53 Palestinian detainees, placing them in prison without a charge or trial, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS).

PPS said 27of the detainees received administrative detention orders for the first time, while the remaining 27 others received renewed administrative orders.

There are some 500 Palestinian detainees being held under administrative detention in Israeli jails, a controversial Israeli practice which allows detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for up to six-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.

According to the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, international law stipulates that administrative detention may be exercised only in very exceptional cases.

Multiple human rights groups have accused Israel of using administrative detention regularly as a form of collective punishment and mass detention of Palestinians, and that it 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.

M.N