🔗 Share this article

Based on figures from Israel, a minimum of 98 detainees from Palestine have lost their lives during detention starting from October 2023. A rights monitoring body operating from Israel has reported that the true figure is likely significantly higher, as a result of hundreds of unaccounted for individuals originating in Gaza.

Report Findings

A new investigation tracked fatalities caused by physical violence, lack of healthcare, and starvation. Researchers employed freedom of information requests, autopsy findings, and discussions with legal representatives, human rights defenders, family members, and eyewitnesses.

Government bodies provided complete data only for the first eight months of the conflict. During this time, government statistics reveal an record death toll among Palestinian prisoners, averaging one death each 96 hours.

Latest Data

The military last updated records on detention fatalities for May 2024, and detention administration by September 2024. Researchers identified a further 35 fatalities in custody following these dates and confirmed them with official sources.

Even with the aggregate figure of deaths recorded being significantly higher than other recent estimates, it likely does not reflect the complete extent of losses among Palestinians, per the head of the prisoner monitoring division.

“Even though we are offering documentation for a higher number of deaths than once estimated, this is not a full picture,” he stated. “We are confident that there are still detainees who perished in custody that we don’t know about.”

Civilian Casualties

Classified official information shows that the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who died in prison were non-combatants, according to a parallel examination.

In May of this year, a defense forces registry following all militants in Gaza, a roster of more than 47,000 listed people, listed just 21 casualties in detention. At that time, 65 Gazans from Gaza had perished in jail.

Custodial Environment

Physical violence, mistreatment, and additional maltreatment of Palestinian individuals is now standard practice across Israel’s jail system during two years of war. Senior officials have openly admitted starvation rations and an underground jail confining detainees who never see daylight.

Current and former detainees and whistleblowers from the Israeli military have collectively claimed systemic violations of global standards.

Organized Maltreatment

The institutionalised cruelty was accompanied by a disturbing rise in deaths recorded across a minimum of 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. In the decade prior to the war, there were usually two or three deaths a year.

“This is not just an individual case occasionally. It is widespread and it is likely to persist,” an official said, partially since there is a environment of near total impunity for killing and mistreating Palestinian individuals.

Merely one incident of attacking prisoners has proceeded to court, with the service member sentenced to half a year. An attempt to try additional individuals over a severe beating involving abuse caused political demonstrations and the arrest of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the suspects now demanding that allegations against them are dropped.

Lack of Accountability

“Despite this significant total of casualties, throughout the conflict no one has been detained,” the spokesperson noted. “There have been no prosecutions over any killing.

“While these policies are being applied, all Palestinian detainees in detention faces risk, even the healthy ones, also the juveniles who have no medical issues.”

Prominent Examples

Certain fatalities in confinement have been publicly known, such as a middle-aged healthcare leader who perished in confinement after four months in detention.

A prisoner held with the deceased testified that he was led to the courtyard by prison staff shortly before his passing, clearly wounded and unclothed from the lower body. His body has not been repatriated to Gaza.

Other prisoners who lost their lives in detention in Israel remain anonymous. Detention administrators and defense forces provided analysts with the number of deaths in detention, and minimal further data for example the location where they perished, but without the detainees’ identities.

Recognition Difficulties

For 21 instances, mainly people from Gaza, analysts could not to connect the minimal data supplied by government bodies to a death registered by advocacy bodies, by means of testimony from released detainees or reporting in the news outlets.

The inmates’ next of kin may not know about their relatives’ casualties either, as Israel has created obstacles to locate Palestinian individuals it is detaining. During 210 days at the beginning of the conflict, the armed services refused to give fundamental details about the condition of thousands of individuals held in Gaza, effectively enacting a approach of involuntary missing persons, per the advocacy organization.

Insufficient Disclosure

From May 2024, authorities have created an email address for requests about detainees from Gaza, but this has provided only a partial and limited betterment. Researchers noted|observed|commented on