continued to arrest hundreds of Palestinian children in the West Bank including East Jerusalem. Many were subjected to abuse by Israeli forces including beatings and threats. The authorities held hundreds of Palestinians, including children, under renewable administrative detention orders based on information that they withheld from the detainees and their lawyers. The numbers held under such orders since October 2015 were the highest since 2007; more than 694 were held at the end of April 2016 (the last month for which reliable data was available). Some detainees undertook lengthy protest hunger strikes; Palestinian detainee Bilal Kayed remained on hunger strike for 71 days. He was released without charge in December. Anas Shadid and Ahmad Abu Farah ended their hunger strike on 22 December after 90 days without food. Three Israeli Jews held as administrative detainees were released. The authorities gave circus performer Mohammed Faisal Abu Sakha two additional six-month administrative detention orders in June and December, based on secret evidence. His first six-month detention order had been issued in December 2015. Palestinians from the West Bank who were charged with protest-related and other offences faced unfair military trials, while Israeli civilian courts trying Palestinians from the Gaza Strip issued harsh sentences, even for minor offences. Mohammed al-Halabi, a Gaza-based humanitarian worker, was denied access to his lawyer and interrogated intensively for three weeks after his arrest in June. He was charged in August with embezzling money from the charity World Vision and passing it to Hamas, the de facto administration in Gaza. World Vision said it had not seen any substantive evidence to support the charge. TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT Israeli soldiers, police and Israel Security Agency (ISA) officers subjected Palestinian detainees, including children, to torture and other ill-treatment with impunity, particularly on arrest and during interrogation. Reported Amnesty International Report 2016/17 methods included beatings, slapping, painful shackling, sleep deprivation, use of stress positions and threats. Although complaints alleging torture by ISA officers have been handled by the Ministry of Justice since 2014, and more than 1,000 had been filed since 2001, no criminal investigations were opened. Complaints that the Israeli police used torture or other ill-treatment against asylum-seekers and members of the Ethiopian community in Israel were also common. The UN Committee against Torture conducted its fifth periodic review of Israel, criticizing continued reports of torture and other ill-treatment, impunity, and the authorities’ failure to proscribe torture as a crime under the law. Israeli officials noted that legislation criminalizing torture was being drafted by the Ministry of Justice, but it was not put before the Knesset (parliament). In September the High Court upheld a 2015 law allowing the authorities to forcefeed hunger-striking detainees; the law was not used in 2016. UNLAWFUL KILLINGS Israeli soldiers, police and security guards killed at least 98 Palestinians from the OPT in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; eight in the Gaza Strip; and three in Israel. In addition, one Palestinian citizen of Israel, responsible for killing three Israelis in Tel Aviv on 1 January, was killed by Israeli police inside Israel. Most of those killed were shot while attacking Israelis or suspected of intending an attack. Some, including children, were shot when they were posing no immediate threat to others’ lives and appeared to be victims of unlawful killings. Extrajudicial executions Some of those killed appeared to have been victims of extrajudicial executions. They included 16-year-old Mahmoud Shaalan, shot dead by Israeli soldiers at a Ramallah checkpoint in February; Mohammed Abu Khalaf, killed in February by Israeli border police in East Jerusalem; and Maram Abu Ismail and her 16-year-old brother Ibrahim, 203