AL-KHALIL, (PIC)-- A human rights organisation said that occupation authorities intensified arrest campaigns against Palestinian activists in 2011, especially after the release of prisoners in a prisoner exchange deal about three months ago.

Ansar organisation for prisoners said in a statement on Friday: “The Israeli occupation arrested 3232 Palestinians during the year 2011, 383 of them children. There are 250 children who remain in occupation jails.”

The organisation noted that there was “a tangible increase in arrests of minors, campaigns of repression and collective punishment of prisoners and denying their rights and privileges they gained through years of struggle inside occupation jails.”

Amongst those arrested in 2011 there were 11 lawmakers making the number of lawmakers detained in occupation jails 23, most of them affiliated with Hamas.

The organisation also said that the last quarter of the year has witnessed an increase in arrests in the districts of Nablus, al-Khalil, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Tulkarem, Salfit and Ramallah.

The organisation noted that 845 arrests were made in the first quarter of the year, 707 arrests in the second quarter, 810 in the third and 870 in the last quarter of the year, 91 one of them minors. Most of the minors were arrested from Sha’fat in Jerusalem and Deheisha refugee camp in Bethlehem.

The arrests also included two a girl and a middle aged woman from al-Khalil; 17-year-old Ala’ al-Je’ba who was arrested on 7 December 2011 and 53-year-old Salwa Hassan who was arrested on 19 October 2011.