Israeli authorities have ordered a 16-year-old Palestinian girl to be held in prison for four months under an administrative detention order. Rimas Dweikat is a high school student and one of three Palestinian girls under the age of 18 currently imprisoned.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society announced on Thursday that 21 of the 90 Palestinian women held in Israeli prisons were detained through administrative orders. Administrative detention allows individuals to be held for up to six months without charge or trial. These orders can be renewed indefinitely while the evidence remains undisclosed.
The teenager was taken into custody on 4 November during a military raid on her family home in Beita. Beita is a town located in the Nablus Governorate in the occupied northern West Bank, according to the official Palestinian WAFA news agency.
Statistics from October showed that the total number of administrative detainees surpassed 3,100 people, including dozens of boys under the age of 18. Approximately 9,300 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in Israeli facilities under various types of detention.
Since the military occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem began in 1967, more than 800,000 Palestinians have spent time in Israeli jails. A United Nations report published in 2023 detailed this figure.
Israeli forces have detained 26,000 people across the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the outbreak of the war in Gaza in late 2023. This total includes 800 women and more than 2,000 children, though the majority of those detained were subsequently released.
