RAMALLAH, September 14, 2025 (WAFA) – Palestinian detainee advocacy organizations reported that Israeli occupation forces detained at least 540 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, during the month of August 2025. Among those detained were 49 children and 19 women.
This brings the total number of detentions in the West Bank since the beginning of the ongoing war to over 19,000, including more than 590 women and around 1,550 children. The figure includes individuals who were later released and excludes the thousands detained from the Gaza Strip.
The data was published in a joint monthly report issued by the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, who monitor and document detention-related violations by Israeli authorities.
The organizations stated that Israeli forces have continued widespread detention campaigns across the West Bank, while also detaining dozens from Gaza, including individuals waiting for humanitarian aid—an area increasingly turned into a trap for killings, detentions, and abuse by Israeli forces.
According to the report, systematic patterns have accompanied these detentions, including violent night raids, destruction of property, physical assaults on detainees and their families, death threats, and the seizure of money, jewelry, and electronics. Families are often held as hostages during raids, and field interrogations are frequently conducted in homes or makeshift military posts.
The organizations further noted that settler violence has played a role in expanding the scope of detentions, especially in villages and areas under intensified colonization, where dozens have been detained and interrogated in connection with confrontations involving settlers.
There has also been a marked escalation in the use of administrative detention—the practice of holding individuals without charge or trial—a policy the organizations say is used to undermine political, social, and cultural life, particularly targeting students, journalists, human rights defenders, and former detainees.
Administrative detainees now make up more than 32 percent of the total number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, including women and children.
The report also emphasized that around 90 percent of appeals and petitions against administrative detention orders have been rejected by Israeli military courts since the beginning of the war, suggesting the judiciary’s role as a key tool in legitimizing and perpetuating this form of arbitrary detention.
M.N
