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by IMEMC News & Agencies

Six of the prisoners received detention orders without charge or trial for the first time, whereas the rest had their sentences renewed for numerous times, said WAFA's report.

An Israeli court has sentenced member of the Palestinian Legislative Council Khalida Jarrar, of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), to a six-month administrative detention, said PPC.

Administrative detention is the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial and on the basis of secret evidence for up to six month periods, indefinitely renewable by Israeli military courts.

The use of administrative detention dates from the “emergency laws” of the British colonial era in Palestine, said the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.

It stated, “Israel’s use of administrative detention violates international law; such detention is allowed only in individual circumstances that are exceptionally compelling for “imperative reasons of security.”

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.

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 20 detainees who received administrative detention orders:

Abd al-Rahman Hammad, Jerusalem, Six months

Ez Ad-din Sirfi, Nablus, Four months

Osama Shahin, Hebron, Four months

Omar Barghothi, Ramallah, Two months

Abd al-Hamid Najajreh, Bethlehem, Four months

Amin Eid Batat, Hebron, Three months

Ammar Elyyan, Ramallah, Four months

Ahmad Salih, Al-Bireh, Six months

Ishaq at-Taweel, Hebron, Four months

Mohammed Obaid, Hebron, Three months

Ghassan Thoqan, Nablus, Three months

Khalida Jarrar, Ramallah, Six months

Ayman Tbaish, Hebron, Three months

Tamer Qawasmeh, Hebron, Six months

Mohammed Abu Ghalyeh, Jerusalem, Five months

Raed Shirbati, Hebron, Four months

Asa’ad Imam, Hebron, Four months

Mohammed Ayyish, Jerusalem, Four months

Mustafa Shawar, Hebron, Two months

Ahmad al-Hraimi, Bethlehem, Four months