🔗 Share this article

According to figures released by Israel, no fewer than 98 Palestinians have perished while in custody since October 2023. A human rights group operating from Israel has reported that the actual number is almost certainly considerably larger, due to hundreds of disappeared people from Gaza.

Study Results

An updated study documented fatalities caused by brutality, failure to provide medical care, and starvation. Investigators employed official data requests, autopsy findings, and testimonies with legal representatives, activists, family members, and eyewitnesses.

Official sources disclosed complete information only for the initial 240 days of the war. Over this period, government statistics reveal an unprecedented fatality rate among Palestinian detainees, amounting to a single fatality every four days.

Latest Data

The military last updated data on detention fatalities for May 2024, and correctional authorities in September 2024. Researchers discovered another 35 casualties in custody subsequent to these dates and confirmed them with government bodies.

Even with the total number of deaths documented being significantly higher than earlier projections, it almost certainly fails to capture the entire scope of Palestinian loss, per the director of the prisoner monitoring division.

“While we are providing evidence for a higher number of casualties than earlier indicated, this is not the entire story,” he said. “We are sure that there are even now detainees who perished in detention that we have not identified.”

Non-Combatant Fatalities

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

In May of 2024, a military intelligence database following all combatants in Gaza, a roster of more than 47,000 named individuals, recorded merely 21 casualties in confinement. By that date, 65 individuals from Palestine from Gaza had perished in prison.

Detention Conditions

Brutality, torture, and additional maltreatment of detainees from Palestine has been normalised across Israel’s jail system during the duration of conflict. Top government figures have publicly referenced starvation rations and an below-ground detention center detaining detainees who are denied sunlight.

Present and past prisoners and informants from the armed services have collectively claimed systemic violations of global standards.

Organized Maltreatment

The institutionalised cruelty was accompanied by a disturbing rise in deaths registered across a minimum of 12 prison sites in Israel. During the previous decade before the hostilities, there were typically a couple deaths a year.

“This does not represent just an individual case sporadically. It is widespread and it will continue,” an official said, partly because there is a climate of near total impunity for harming and abusing Palestinian individuals.

Merely one incident of assaulting detainees has proceeded to court, with the soldier sentenced to 210 days. An effort to prosecute other suspects over a vicious assault featuring assault led to public rallies and the apprehension of Israel’s chief legal officer, with the suspects now requesting that charges against them be withdrawn.

Lack of Accountability

“In spite of this mass number of casualties, throughout the conflict not a single person has been arrested,” the representative said. “There are no indictments over any killing.

“During the time these measures are being applied, every Palestinian in custody faces risk, also the healthy ones, also the young ones who have no underlying conditions.”

Notable Incidents

Several casualties in detention have been publicly known, such as a middle-aged healthcare leader who died in confinement after 120 days in confinement.

A prisoner incarcerated with the victim testified that he was taken to the courtyard by guards just prior to his passing, clearly wounded and naked from the lower body. His corpse remains unreleased to Gaza.

Further inmates who died in Israeli custody are unidentified. Detention administrators and armed services supplied analysts with the number of fatalities in detention, and minimal other details including the site where they died, but not the inmates’ personal details.

Recognition Difficulties

For 21 instances, mainly individuals from Gaza, analysts were not able to connect the limited information supplied by officials to a fatality recorded by advocacy bodies, by means of accounts from freed prisoners or coverage in the media.

The detainees’ families might not have learned about their loved ones’ deaths as well, as Israel has created obstacles to track detainees it is holding. Over half a year at the outset of the conflict, the defense forces declined to give basic information about the condition of many of individuals detained in Gaza, effectively enacting a policy of forced disappearance, as stated by the advocacy organization.

Restricted Access

Starting in May 2024, authorities have created an email address for inquiries about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has provided only a incomplete and restricted enhancement. Researchers noted|observed|commented on