🔗 Share this article

According to data released by Israel, no fewer than 98 detainees from Palestine have lost their lives while in custody beginning in October 2023. An advocacy organization operating from Israel has indicated that the real number is probably substantially higher, because of many of unaccounted for people from Gaza.

Study Results

An updated study recorded fatalities caused by assault, failure to provide medical care, and malnutrition. Analysts employed freedom of information requests, autopsy findings, and discussions with lawyers, advocates, next of kin, and eyewitnesses.

Government bodies provided comprehensive statistics solely covering the opening period of the war. Over this period, reported numbers show an record fatality rate among Palestinian detainees, averaging a single fatality every four days.

Updated Statistics

Official armed forces most recently revised data on detention fatalities for May 2024, and detention administration in September 2024. Investigators identified an additional 35 fatalities in confinement following these periods and validated them with Israeli authorities.

Despite the aggregate figure of fatalities recorded being significantly higher than earlier projections, it likely omits the complete extent of Palestinian loss, per the director of the prisoner monitoring division.

“While we are presenting proof for a greater figure of fatalities than once estimated, this is an incomplete account,” he stated. “We are certain that there are yet detainees who lost their lives in detention that we don’t know about.”

Non-Combatant Fatalities

Restricted official information shows that the largest portion of incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza who perished in jail were non-combatants, per a parallel investigation.

During May of this year, a defense forces registry monitoring all fighters in Gaza, a registry of over 47,000 identified persons, documented merely 21 fatalities in custody. By that point, 65 Gazans from Gaza had died in jail.

Prison Situation

Assault, mistreatment, and further cruelty of detainees from Palestine is now standard practice across Israel’s detention facilities over 24 months of conflict. Top government figures have openly admitted minimal sustenance and an below-ground detention center holding Palestinians who are denied sunlight.

Current and former detainees and informants from the armed services have collectively claimed systemic violations of human rights protocols.

Organized Maltreatment

The institutionalised cruelty was accompanied by a disturbing rise in deaths recorded across at least 12 prison sites in Israel. Over ten years before the hostilities, there were typically several fatalities a year.

“This does not represent merely an isolated incident sporadically. It is systemic and it is expected to endure,” a spokesperson said, partly since there is a environment of almost complete immunity for killing and mistreating Palestinians.

Merely one incident of beating prisoners has proceeded to court, with the military personnel sentenced to seven months. An attempt to prosecute other suspects over a brutal attack involving assault resulted in political demonstrations and the detention of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the alleged perpetrators now requesting that allegations against them are dropped.

No Legal Action

“Regardless of this mass number of fatalities, over two years not one individual has been arrested,” the official noted. “There are no charges over any fatality.

“As long as these practices are being applied, all Palestinian detainees in detention faces risk, including the healthy ones, including the young ones who have no underlying conditions.”

High-Profile Cases

Some deaths in confinement have been high profile, for instance a middle-aged healthcare leader who perished in detention after a third of a year in confinement.

A prisoner detained alongside the deceased testified that he was taken to the yard by prison staff shortly before his passing, visibly injured and unclothed from the lower body. His corpse has not been returned to Gaza.

Other prisoners who died in detention in Israel are unidentified. The prison service and defense forces gave investigators with the total of fatalities in detention, and minimal additional information including the location where they died, but excluding the detainees’ identities.

Identification Challenges

In 21 cases, primarily individuals from Gaza, investigators were not able to match the limited information given by authorities to a casualty documented by advocacy bodies, via accounts from freed prisoners or accounts in the news outlets.

The prisoners’ relatives might not have learned about their family members’ fatalities as well, as Israel has impeded efforts to track detainees it is confining. For seven months at the beginning of the conflict, the Israeli military refused to give fundamental details about the status of many of individuals detained in Gaza, effectively enacting a approach of involuntary missing persons, according to the advocacy organization.

Restricted Access

Beginning last May, government bodies have created an email address for inquiries about Palestinian individuals from Gaza, but this has resulted in merely a modest and inadequate betterment. Investigators noted|observed|commented on