RAMALLAH, April 8, 2015 (WAFA) – Israeli authorities Sunday issued administrative detention orders against 37 Palestinian prisoners, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club (PPC).

PPC said that nine of the prisoners received detention orders without charge or trial for the first time, whereas the rest had their sentences renewed for numerous times.

Under administrative detention, a prisoner can be held in jail without charge or trial and on the basis of secret evidence for up to six month periods, indefinitely renewable by Israeli military courts.

According to the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, this kind of detention is in violation of international law, and should only be allowed in individual circumstances that are exceptionally compelling for “imperative reasons of security.

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

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.

According to Israel Prison Service (IPS) data, more than 60% of administrative detainees held at the end of August 2014 had been held for three months or less. Some 10% had been held for three to six months, some 13% from six months to one year, and some 13% from one to two years

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.

There are four Palestinian prisoners currently on a hunger strike to protest their illegal detention without charge or trial and the policy of solitary confinement.

On July 12, Israeli authorities released political prisoner Khader Adnan, who went on a hunger strike for 55 consecutive days to protest his administrative detention, after he reached a deal with the latter to end his strike in return for his release.

Adnan’s release came following intensified local and international calls to release him following a severe deterioration in his health, which left him on the verge of death.

Meanwhile, Israeli military courts have renewed the detention orders of around 49 prisoners, for different periods of time, under the pretext of completing investigations and judicial proceedings.

M.N./T.R.