At least 7,500 Palestinians were being held in Israeli jails and detention facilities at the end of 2009, the Palestinian Authority said on Thursday. The detainees include 34 women, 310 children and 304 people being held under administrative detention without trial, according to a report published by the prisoners affairs ministry.
The detainees also include 17 MPs, most of them from the Islamist Hamas movement, two former ministers, and a number of political leaders. The vast majority of the prisoners, 6,330, are from the occupied West Bank. Another 750 detainees hail from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and some 420 are from annexed Arab east Jerusalem and Israel, the ministry said. The longest serving prisoners are two brothers, Fakhri and Nail Barghuti, and Akram Mansur, all of whom have been in prison for 32 years.
They are among 317 prisoners jailed before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 following the Oslo autonomy accords. The ministry said 197 prisoners have died in Israeli custody since 1967. More than 5,000 people were detained at some point in 2009, an average of 14 per day, but most were later released.
Israel and Hamas have been struggling for months to reach a prisoner exchange deal that would see hundreds of Palestinians released in a swap for an Israeli soldier captured by Gaza militants in June 2006. Both sides have been tight-lipped about the discussions, which have been carried out through Egyptian and German mediators.
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