🔗 Share this article

Per information provided by Israel, no fewer than 98 detainees from Palestine have died while in custody since October 2023. A rights monitoring body operating from Israel has indicated that the true figure is probably substantially greater, because of hundreds of missing individuals from Gaza.

Study Results

A new investigation documented deaths attributed to assault, lack of healthcare, and inadequate nutrition. Researchers utilized official data requests, forensic reports, and interviews with lawyers, activists, family members, and observers.

Israeli authorities disclosed detailed data only for the first eight months of the war. Throughout these months, government statistics reveal an record fatality rate among detained Palestinians, amounting to one death once every four-day period.

Recent Figures

Israeli defense forces finalized data on detention fatalities for May 2024, and the prison service during September 2024. Investigators discovered an additional 35 casualties in detention after these dates and confirmed them with official sources.

Despite the overall count of casualties documented being much greater than other recent estimates, it likely does not reflect the full scale of Palestinian loss, per the head of the prisoners and detainees department.

“Even though we are presenting proof for a greater figure of deaths than earlier indicated, this is not a full picture,” he explained. “We are sure that there are still individuals who lost their lives in confinement that we don’t know about.”

Civilian Deaths

Restricted Israeli data shows that the vast majority of incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza who lost their lives in detention were civilians, based on a related inquiry.

By May of 2024, a defense forces registry following all militants in Gaza, a registry of in excess of 47,000 named individuals, listed only 21 deaths in confinement. By that date, 65 Gazans from Gaza had died in jail.

Prison Situation

Assault, torture, and other abuse of detainees from Palestine has become routine across Israel’s prison network during the duration of hostilities. High-ranking authorities have publicly acknowledged starvation rations and an subterranean prison holding Palestinian individuals who never see daylight.

Present and past prisoners and informants from the Israeli military have all alleged widespread breaches of human rights protocols.

Organized Maltreatment

The organized mistreatment occurred alongside a alarming increase in casualties documented across at least 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. Over ten years prior to the war, there were usually two or three deaths a year.

“This does not represent just an individual case here and there. It is institutional and it is expected to endure,” a spokesperson stated, in part since there is a climate of near total impunity for harming and abusing detainees.

Merely one incident of beating prisoners has reached litigation, with the service member handed a punishment to half a year. An effort to try others over a severe beating featuring sexual violence caused right-wing protests and the detention of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the suspects now insisting that allegations against them be withdrawn.

Absence of Consequences

“Regardless of this large quantity of deaths, over two years not a single person has been detained,” the spokesperson stated. “There exist no prosecutions over any killing.

“While these policies remain in effect, all Palestinian detainees in custody faces risk, including the healthy ones, including the youth who have no underlying conditions.”

Prominent Examples

Several casualties in custody have been publicly known, including a 50-year-old hospital director who died in prison after four months in confinement.

A detainee incarcerated with the deceased reported that he was led to the yard by prison staff just prior to his death, visibly injured and unclothed from the lower body. His body remains unreleased to Gaza.

Other prisoners who perished in Israeli custody are unidentified. Correctional authorities and armed services gave investigators with the figure of casualties in custody, and basic additional information for example the location where they died, but without the prisoners’ names.

Recognition Difficulties

Regarding 21 occurrences, mainly detainees from Gaza, analysts were unable to correlate the minimal data given by government bodies to a fatality recorded by human rights groups, via statements from released detainees or reporting in the media.

The inmates’ next of kin may not know about their relatives’ casualties as well, as Israel has made it difficult to track detainees it is detaining. For seven months at the start of the war, the defense forces refused to give basic information about the status of many of people held in Gaza, practically implementing a policy of unacknowledged detention, per the rights monitoring body.

Insufficient Disclosure

From May 2024, government bodies have established an digital correspondence for inquiries about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has provided only a incomplete and restricted improvement. Analysts noted|observed|commented on