Ramallah, December 31 (QNA) - A Palestinian prisoners' rights group has accused Israel of carrying out an unprecedented escalation in arrests across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, during 2025.

In a statement issued in Ramallah on Wednesday, the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies said it had documented more than 7,500 arrests over the past year, including around 600 cases involving minors.

The center said the arrests were part of a systematic policy aimed at disrupting Palestinian society and undermining resistance. It added that the figures did not include thousands of Palestinians who were temporarily detained during mass arrest campaigns and field interrogations before being released, many of whom were former prisoners.

According to the center, Israel was using detention as a form of collective punishment and as a means of disrupting daily life for Palestinians, describing the policy as retaliatory and based on intimidation. It said this violated international law, which restricts arrest to specific conditions and clearly defined charges.

The group said arrests had affected all segments of Palestinian society, including children. It reported that some of the detained minors were as young as 10 years old. The center also referred to the death of a Palestinian child detainee from the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah, which it attributed to conditions inside Israeli prisons.

The statement said more than 200 women had also been arrested during the year, most of them on allegations of incitement on social media. (QNA)