An international online campaign to release Palestinian minors from Israeli jails is expected to start today, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club announced.

More than 1,500 Palestinian children have been arrested throughout the occupied Palestinian territories since the start of the Jerusalem Intifada, 430 are still being detained.

Spokesman for the Palestinian Prisoners Club Abdullah Zghari said the campaign aims to “send a message to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urging him to secure the release of Palestinian minors and ease their suffering inside Israeli prisons.”

Zghari said lawyers who visited the children in detention centres stress that the children “are subjected to psychological and physical torture, beatings, extortion, threats and failure to provide adequate material to warm them during the cold winter.”

Zghari said the campaign will be implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Education as well as a number of Arab and international human rights organisations as solidarity is needed from all.

(MEMO)