Israeli occupation forces arrested 388 Palestinians, including 70 minors, across the occupied Palestinian Territory in the month of June, rights groups revealed yesterday.

126 of the imprisoned Palestinians were from occupied East Jerusalem, 261 were residents of the occupied West Bank and one was from the besieged Gaza Strip, according to a report issued by The Palestinian Prisoners Society, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association and the Prisoners Affairs Commission.

According to the report, there are currently an estimated 6,300 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, including 57 women, 10 minor girls, 300 children and 486 administrative detainees -Israel's policy of internment without charge or trial.

Israel is the only country in the world that prosecutes children in military courts, according to Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCIP), with 60 percent of Palestinian child detainees being transferred from Palestinian territory to Israeli prisons in direct of violation of international law.

In terms of the number of administrative detention orders, the report noted 61 detention orders were issued in June, including 19 new orders and 42 renewals for the second and third time.

The report denounced “an ongoing Israeli pattern of violations of the principles laid down in [international human rights legal] conventions” regarding the rights of prisoners, notably through its use of torture, ill-treatment and administrative detention.

“[Israeli] authorities continue to use psychological and physical methods and forms of torture and ill-treatment during interrogation… stress positions, shouting, insults and humiliation, lengthy hours of interrogation, threats of arrests of family members, sleep deprivation, denial of access to lawyers or imprisonment in an interrogation centre lacking the minimum conditions for human life, in order to pressure [Palestinians] with a view toward extracting a confession in order to secure a subsequent conviction.”

Addameer has estimated that some 20 percent of Palestinians – and 40 per cent of Palestinian men – have been detained by Israel at some point in their lives.