🔗 Share this article

Based on data provided by Israel, at least 98 detainees from Palestine have lost their lives while detained beginning in October 2023. A human rights group based in Israel has stated that the actual number is almost certainly substantially higher, as a result of hundreds of missing detainees from Gaza.

Report Findings

A new investigation recorded fatalities caused by brutality, lack of healthcare, and starvation. Researchers employed transparency petitions, autopsy findings, and discussions with lawyers, advocates, family members, and observers.

Israeli authorities disclosed detailed data only for the opening period of the war. Over this period, reported numbers indicate an record casualty rate among Palestinian prisoners, equating to a single fatality once every four-day period.

Recent Figures

Israeli defense forces most recently revised information on detention fatalities for May 2024, and detention administration in September 2024. Researchers discovered an additional 35 fatalities in custody following these periods and verified them with Israeli authorities.

Even with the aggregate figure of casualties charted being substantially larger than earlier projections, it probably does not reflect the complete extent of Palestinian loss, per the director of the detainee affairs unit.

“While we are providing evidence for a higher number of casualties than earlier indicated, this is not a full picture,” he stated. “We are sure that there are even now people who died in detention that we don’t know about.”

Civilian Deaths

Classified official information indicates that the majority of Palestinian detainees from Gaza who lost their lives in jail were non-combatants, according to a related inquiry.

During May of this year, a military intelligence database following all fighters in Gaza, a roster of over 47,000 listed people, listed only 21 deaths in confinement. By that point, 65 individuals from Palestine from Gaza had lost their lives in detention.

Prison Situation

Physical violence, mistreatment, and additional maltreatment of detainees from Palestine has become routine across Israel’s prison network throughout 24 months of conflict. Top government figures have publicly referenced inadequate food and an subterranean prison holding detainees who never see daylight.

Existing and previous inmates and whistleblowers from the Israeli military have uniformly asserted systemic violations of international law.

Systemic Abuse

The institutionalised cruelty occurred alongside a alarming increase in casualties registered across a minimum of 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. In the decade prior to the war, there were typically a couple casualties a year.

“This does not represent only a single occurrence occasionally. It is widespread and it is likely to persist,” a spokesperson commented, partially due to the fact there is a climate of near total impunity for harming and abusing detainees.

Just one case of attacking prisoners has proceeded to court, with the soldier given a penalty to half a year. An effort to try others over a severe beating featuring sexual violence led to right-wing protests and the arrest of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the alleged perpetrators now insisting that allegations against them be withdrawn.

No Legal Action

“Regardless of this significant total of fatalities, over two years not one individual has been detained,” the spokesperson noted. “There exist no indictments over any death.

“While these practices are being applied, every Palestinian in confinement is in danger, even the healthy ones, including the juveniles who have no underlying conditions.”

Notable Incidents

Certain fatalities in detention have been high profile, such as a senior hospital director who died in confinement after 120 days in custody.

An inmate detained alongside the victim stated that he was taken to the courtyard by prison staff shortly before his demise, obviously hurt and naked from the lower body. His corpse has not been returned to Gaza.

Further inmates who died in detention in Israel are unidentified. Detention administrators and armed services supplied researchers with the total of fatalities in detention, and basic further data including the site where they perished, but not the inmates’ personal details.

Identification Challenges

In 21 cases, mainly people from Gaza, investigators were unable to correlate the limited information given by officials to a casualty registered by advocacy bodies, either through statements from former inmates or accounts in the news outlets.

The prisoners’ relatives might not have learned about their family members’ fatalities either, as Israel has impeded efforts to monitor detainees it is holding. For seven months at the beginning of the war, the defense forces refused to give essential data about the status of many of people detained in Gaza, effectively implementing a policy of involuntary missing persons, as stated by the rights monitoring body.

Limited Transparency

From May 2024, government bodies have established an electronic contact for requests about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has provided only a modest and inadequate improvement. Analysts noted|observed|commented on