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A file photo of Hassan Youssef.
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RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- An Israeli court sentenced a Hamas-affiliated Palestinian lawmaker to six months of administrative detention on Tuesday.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said that an Israeli court rejected the appeal of Hassan Youssef, a Hamas leader in the occupied West Bank, and sentenced him to an additional six months in administrative detention -- internment without charges or trial based on undisclosed evidence.

Israeli forces detained Youssef on Oct. 20, 2015 in his home in Ramallah, accusing the 60-year-old member of the Palestinian Legislative Council of “inciting terrorism.”

However, Youssef’s administrative detention sentence means that no charges have been officially leveled against him.

Youssef had previously been imprisoned by Israel on several occasions. Most recently, he had been detained in June 2014 and released a year later, only to be detained again in October.

According to prisoners’ rights group Addameer, 7,000 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons as of July, including seven Palestinian Legislative Council members -- three of whom are held in administrative detention.

Israel’s policy of administrative detention, almost exclusively used against Palestinians, has been widely criticized by rights group which have accused Israel of using the policy to erode Palestinian political and social life by detaining scores of Palestinians without proof of wrongdoing.

Palestinian prisoners have launched a large-scale hunger strike to call for an end to administrative detention in the past several months.