“This report was not written in good faith,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.

The comment came after a report by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said the detained children were also subject to solitary confinement and threats of sexual assault.

Kirsten Sandberg, a Norwegian who chairs the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, said the report was based on facts, not on the political opinions of its members, Jpost.com reported.

The CRC periodically reviews Israel, along with the other 192 UN member states, so that it can monitor its compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

It explained that the Israeli military had arrested, interrogated and detained an estimated 7,000 Palestinian children aged 12 to 17 years, but sometimes as young as nine, over the past several years.

This means that an average of two children per day were arrested, the CRC said. It added that the number of Palestinian minors who were arrested increased by 73 percent since September 2011.

Many of the Palestinian kids were arrested on an arbitrary basis, the CRC said.

There are currently 236 Palestinian children detained for alleged security reasons, the CRC said. It added that the minors could be held for four days before being brought to a judge, and they were rarely informed of their rights to have their parents or an attorney present.

Palestinian minors are often arrested in the middle of the night, blindfolded and their hands are tied behind their backs, the CRC said.