News-Middle East-Palestine: An independent and nongovernmental rights organization says Israeli military forces have arrested some 1,000 Palestinian minors across the occupied West Bank, including the Old City of al-Quds, and the besieged Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year, as the Tel Aviv regime continues its campaign of abuse and arrest against Palestinians.

The Palestinian Prisoners' Center for Studies (PCBS) said in a report published on Monday that Israeli authorities have clearly escalated their acts against Palestinians during the current year, and arrested 1,000 children, including 73 ones under the age of fourteen, since January.

The aim is to deter Palestinian minors from resistance against the Israeli occupation, ruin their educational opportunities, destroy their future and create a weak and coward generation, the PCBS pointed out.

“The Israeli regime does not hesitate to arrest wounded [Palestinian] children after shooting them, sometimes dangerously. It interrogates the minors in hospitals, and coerces them to make false confessions instead of providing them with treatment and medical care,” Riyad al-Ashqar, the director of the center, said.

“As a result of the intensive arrest campaign targeting Palestinian minors, the number of child prisoners in Israeli jails has soared to 230. They are being held at various wards inside Megiddo, Ofer and Damon prisons. They are suffering from very harsh detention conditions, and lack the most basic necessities,” he added.

The center announced that it has recorded the detention of 310 Palestinians, including 33 children and nine women, over the previous month, stressing that 230 minors are still being held behind bars in Israeli detention centers.

The center noted that the occupied city of al-Quds witnessed more than a third of the arrests, and the figure stood at 115 cases.

The PCBS said it had monitored eight arrests from the Gaza Strip, six of whom were young men that crossed the border fence on the eastern flank of the coastal sliver. Most of them were released and returned to the Strip after hours-long interrogations.

However, merchant Hassan Mohsen al-Sharafi, 31, and 42-year-old Amjad Ahmed Dardouna – both residents of Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, were arrested as they were passing through the Erez checkpoint and remain in prison.