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Interesting article on BBC website on the prisoners on both sides:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5211930.stm

Since the first Palestinian uprising began in 1987 the vast majority of security prisoners held in Israel have always been Palestinians. According to official figures supplied to the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, 9,153 Palestinians are currently held by civilian and military authorities.

Of those, B'Tselem says 8,085 are held in civilian jails, 2,384 of them without charge. Some 645 are held under "administrative detention", without charge and often without knowledge of the suspicions against them. Among those in civil jails are 74 women and 265 under-18s.[url][/url]

Very depressing

One of the biggest problems in the Israeli prison system (if it can be called that), I'm referring to the adminstrative detainees is that there is no separation by age. So there are 13,14 year-olds that are held with adults.

But (isn't there always a but) I think what makes this even more irritating is that isn't the behaviour you would expect of a democratic society. (Similar to outrage over the abuses in Abu-Ghraib, or Guantanamo). Although, I still think that its preferable than to the abuses that occured Syrians or Iraqi prisions, many of which will never be known, since few have lived to tell about it.