🔗 Share this article

Based on figures released by Israel, at least 98 Palestinian individuals have perished during detention starting from October 2023. A human rights group operating from Israel has reported that the true number is probably substantially larger, due to hundreds of disappeared individuals in Gaza.

Report Findings

A new investigation documented fatalities caused by physical violence, medical neglect, and malnutrition. Analysts employed official data requests, forensic reports, and interviews with lawyers, human rights defenders, relatives, and observers.

Israeli authorities released comprehensive data only for the first eight months of the war. During this time, official figures reveal an historically high death toll among Palestinian detainees, averaging a life lost every four days.

Latest Data

The military last updated information on detention fatalities for May 2024, and detention administration during September 2024. Researchers documented another 35 fatalities in confinement following these periods and confirmed them with government bodies.

Despite the total number of fatalities charted being substantially larger than previous assessments, it probably fails to capture the complete extent of losses among Palestinians, according to the leader of the detainee affairs unit.

“Even though we are providing evidence for a larger total of casualties than previously reported, this is an incomplete account,” he said. “We are sure that there are still people who died in detention that we are unaware of.”

Civilian Deaths

Classified Israeli data indicates that the vast majority of incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza who perished in detention were civilians, per a related examination.

By May of this year, a defense forces registry tracking all combatants in Gaza, a list of more than 47,000 named individuals, recorded just 21 fatalities in detention. By that date, 65 Palestinians from Gaza had lost their lives in jail.

Detention Conditions

Physical violence, mistreatment, and other abuse of Palestinians has been normalised across Israel’s prison network during two years of hostilities. Top government figures have openly admitted starvation rations and an subterranean prison confining detainees who are kept in darkness.

Present and past detainees and whistleblowers from the Israeli military have uniformly asserted routine infractions of international law.

Systemic Abuse

The organized mistreatment occurred alongside a troubling surge in casualties recorded across a minimum of 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. During the previous decade preceding the hostilities, there were usually two or three fatalities a year.

“This isn’t just an individual case occasionally. It is systemic and it will continue,” a spokesperson stated, partially since there is a culture of almost complete immunity for harming and abusing Palestinians.

Merely one incident of attacking inmates has reached litigation, with the military personnel handed a punishment to seven months. An attempt to charge others over a severe beating featuring sexual violence resulted in public rallies and the detention of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the alleged perpetrators now demanding that charges against them be withdrawn.

No Legal Action

“Despite this significant total of deaths, throughout the conflict no one has faced arrest,” the representative noted. “There have been no prosecutions over any fatality.

“While these practices remain in effect, each Palestinian individual in custody faces risk, including the those in good health, also the young ones who have no health problems.”

Prominent Examples

Several casualties in custody have been widely reported, such as a middle-aged hospital director who died in detention after four months in custody.

A prisoner incarcerated with the victim testified that he was led to the yard by prison staff immediately preceding his passing, visibly injured and unclothed from the lower body. His remains has not been repatriated to Gaza.

Other prisoners who perished in Israeli custody are unidentified. Correctional authorities and military provided analysts with the number of casualties in detention, and minimal additional information such as the facility where they perished, but excluding the inmates’ personal details.

Identification Challenges

In 21 cases, primarily detainees from Gaza, investigators could not to match the minimal data provided by officials to a fatality recorded by advocacy bodies, via testimony from former inmates or coverage in the news outlets.

The inmates’ next of kin may not know about their family members’ fatalities as well, as Israel has made it difficult to track detainees it is detaining. For seven months at the outset of the war, the Israeli military declined to provide basic information about the whereabouts of thousands of individuals detained in Gaza, in effect enacting a policy of unacknowledged detention, as stated by the advocacy organization.

Limited Transparency

Beginning last May, officials have provided an electronic contact for inquiries about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has resulted in merely a partial and limited improvement. Analysts noted|observed|commented on