RAMALLAH, June 29, 2026 (WAFA) – The Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS) said on Monday that Israeli occupation authorities continue to escalate their targeting of students across the occupied West Bank, with four Tawjihi (General Secondary Education Certificate Examination) students detained since the start of the examination period.

The PPS said that four students have been detained since the start of the examinations, including one placed under administrative detention.

The Society noted that Israeli occupation forces had previously detained 65 male and female Tawjihi students before and during the current academic year.

Tawjihi is a crucial examination taken by students at the end of their secondary education. The results of the Tawjihi exams determine a student’s eligibility for higher education and university admissions.

It added that, since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023, Israeli occupation authorities have intensified detention campaigns targeting students at all educational levels as part of the widespread detention campaigns that have affected tens of thousands of Palestinians.

It said the most important stage in Tawjihi students' educational journey has been turned into yet another form of abuse through their detention and deprivation of the opportunity to sit for their final examinations.

The Society pointed out that this escalation has extended beyond the expansion of detention campaigns targeting students to include the conditions of student and child detainees in Israeli prisons, where they have been completely deprived of their right to education.

It stressed that the denial of detainees' right to education has become one of the most dangerous policies adopted by the Israeli prison system in the aftermath of the genocide.

The PPS noted that the right to education had long been one of the key rights that detainees struggled to secure and preserve, despite repeated attempts by the prison administration to strip them of that right. However, with the onset of the genocidal war, the Israeli prison system revoked all detainees’ rights and turned prisons into an environment of torture, abuse, and systematic violations around the clock.

It stressed that the prison system is implementing a comprehensive policy of systematic torture, humiliation, and abuse aimed at undermining detainees physically and psychologically, including child detainees and detained students.

The Society called on international human rights organizations and relevant United Nations bodies concerned with human rights, children’s rights, and the right to education to assume their responsibilities regarding the escalating crimes against detained Palestinian students. It urged them to exert immediate pressure on Israeli occupation authorities to end the policy of targeting students and depriving them of their right to education, ensure protection for child and student detainees, and end systematic torture policies that constitute flagrant violations of international humanitarian law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

T.R.