Qais Darwesh Omar
29 June 2026•Update: 29 June 2026
Israel has arrested 65 Palestinian high school students in the occupied West Bank since the start of 2026, including four detained since final exams began this month, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said on Monday.
The arrests were part of “an ongoing Israeli escalation targeting Palestinian students and depriving them of their right to education,” the nongovernmental group said in a statement.
The rights group said a student was placed under administrative detention, while another was shot and wounded before being arrested.
“Since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, Israeli forces have escalated arrest campaigns targeting students across various educational levels, as part of broader arrest operations that have affected tens of thousands of Palestinians,” the group added.
“They have transformed the most critical stage of a high school student's educational journey into a station for abuse, by detaining them and depriving them of the chance to take their exams,” it said.
“The prison system today practices an integrated policy based on systematic torture, humiliation, and abuse, aimed at breaking the prisoners psychologically and physically – practices that also target child prisoners and detained students,” the group added.
The rights group called on international human rights organizations and the United Nations to urgently intervene to stop the targeting of Palestinian students and ensure their right to education and protection from violations.
According to Palestinian figures, attacks by the Israeli army and occupiers in the West Bank since Oct. 8, 2023, have killed more than 1,173 Palestinians, injured 12,666 and led to the arrest of about 23,000.
More than 9,600 Palestinian detainees are currently held in Israeli detention centers, including women and children, where they face starvation, torture and medical neglect, leading to the deaths of dozens during detention.
*Writing by Lina Altawell in Istanbul
