RAMALLAH, May 13, 2015 (WAFA) – The Israeli authorities recently issued administrative detention orders against 18 Palestinian prisoners, according to a statement by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club (PPC).

PPC said that five prisoners were given administrative detention orders for the first time, while the remaining 13 received detention orders without charge or trial for the second or third time.

Under administrative detention, prisoners are held without charge or trial and for an indefinite, renewable period of time.

The use of administrative detention dates from the “emergency laws” of the British colonial era in Palestine.

Israel uses administrative detention routinely 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.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said that, “Israel's use of administrative detention blatantly violates the restrictions of international law. Israel carries it out in a highly classified manner that denies detainees the possibility of mounting a proper defense. Moreover, the detention has no upper time limit.”

Over the years, Israel has placed thousands of Palestinians in administrative detention for prolonged periods of time, without trying them, without informing them of the charges against them, and without allowing them or their counsel to examine the evidence, B’Tselem reports.

“In this way, the military judicial system ignores the right to freedom and due process, the right of defendants to state their case, and the presumption of innocence, all of which are protections clearly enshrined in both Israeli and international law,” said the center.

There are around 500 detainees serving administrative detention in several Israeli jails. Jarrar is not the only lawmaker to be imprisoned; 18 of the Palestinian Legislative Council members are currently held in Israeli detention without charge or trial.

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 18 detainees who received administrative detention orders:

M.N./T.R.