Renu Mouffu, a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said he had attended the demonstration in support of a group of Palestinian students who wanted to write to the foreign ministry urging better treatment of the West Bank Palestinians.

“If you want for your children to grow up in a state that is a democracy, you should demand that they will have their rights protected. That is what the whole world is saying,” he said.

The movement’s leaders, whose numbers have swelled with the creation of a youth wing, have called on Palestinians to take part in protests across the occupied West Bank.

Mouffu, who is also a board member of Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, a non-governmental organization that focuses on human rights in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said a few weeks ago they were organising an informal demonstration in front of the Foreign Ministry when security forces fired tear gas and sprayed the protestors with pepper spray.

He said he was then told that it was impossible to organise any subsequent gathering as the demonstration had been banned by police because of the presence of a number of religious students and members of an extremist group called Hamas.

During Friday’s protest in Jerusalem, Mouffu’s group carried banners and banners protesting restrictions on Jewish prayer in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Israel has allowed Muslims in the holy city permission to pray freely for the eighth time in seven years, as they bid to commemorate the deaths of Jewish worshippers during the 7th century Islamic conquest of Jerusalem.

Most of those killed during the conquest were women and children carrying baby strollers.

Mouffu said the ruling made his movement “very angry, especially with the foreign ministry after many years of our being so ignored”.

The young Palestinian was not the only person arrested by state security forces during the protest, he said, adding that police did little to detain the protesters when they occupied a road leading to the compound.

“I have been detained several times for trying to stop the demolition of some homes and for trying to protest against demolition. But there was nothing like this time.”

He described the response by Palestinian civil society as “not very professional”.

The foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.