Palestinian Arabs fabricating facts on arrests, prisoners

From Ma'an:

A report published on Monday has found that over 3,000 Palestinians were arrested by Israel's military in 2011.

Researcher on prisoner affairs Abdul Nasser Ferwaneh said that the average number of arrests in 2011 numbered 276 per month, or around nine a day.

A total of 3,312 Palestinians were arrested by Israeli authorities in 2011, 113 of whom were prisoners released in the October exchange deal between Hamas and Israel.

The detainees represented a cross section of Palestinian society, Ferwaneh said.

The number of annual arrests has actually decreased, Ferwaneh added, noting that in 2007 a total of 7,612 people were arrested by Israel military forces.

Sounds authoritative, doesn't it? Such specific numbers! And Ferwaneh even has an entire website dedicated to his passion of documenting prisoners with the very impartial name of "Palestine Behind Bars."

Only one problem. PCHR also counts all of the people arrested by Israel, and their numbers don't come close. According to PCHR, since October only around 249 have been arrested; Ferwana claims nearly 700 in that time period.

PCHR documents each arrest; Ferwana does not.

But the Ma'an article gets even more ridiculous:

Ramallah based prisoner group Addameer said in early December that Israel had detained nearly the same number of Palestinians they had freed in the first stage of a prisoner exchange deal.

Israeli forces detained nearly 470 Palestinians since the Oct. 18 release of 477 prisoners from Israeli jail in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Ramallah-based rights group Addameer said.

"This wave of arrests reveals that the exchange deal has not deterred Israel’s policy of detention of Palestinians; rather, Israeli prisons are being refilled with almost the exact number of Palestinians that were released in October," the prisoners group had said.

As I have documented, Addameer literally makes things up. According to Addammeer, Israel has arrested over 800,000 Palestinian Arabs since 1967 - and some have said even 900,000. These numbers are absurd and yet they grow by about 100,000 every year. Yet even Goldstone believed them.

Now, let's look at Addameer's claim that Israel has imprisoned as many people as it released since October 18th and see if its record of lies continues.

B'Tselem keeps track of the number of prisoners in Israeli prisons. At the end of September there were 5,269, after the October prisoner release it was 4,772, and on November 30 it was at 4,803 - a lot less than 5,269.

Has Israel gone on a mad rush of arrests since December 1?  PCHR counts 105 arrests since then, so even if every single one of those went to prison - which never happens - Addameer's numbers are again shown to be complete fabrications.