🔗 Share this article

Based on data from Israel, a minimum of 98 Palestinian individuals have lost their lives while detained starting from October 2023. A rights monitoring body based in Israel has indicated that the true number is probably significantly larger, due to numerous of disappeared detainees originating in Gaza.

Study Results

An updated study recorded casualties caused by physical violence, failure to provide medical care, and starvation. Researchers used official data requests, forensic reports, and interviews with attorneys, activists, relatives, and observers.

Official sources disclosed complete data limited to the first eight months of the war. During this time, official figures reveal an historically high fatality rate among Palestinian detainees, equating to one death each 96 hours.

Latest Data

Official armed forces last updated records on deaths in detention for May 2024, and the prison service by September 2024. Analysts discovered a further 35 deaths in detention after these timeframes and confirmed them with Israeli authorities.

Despite the total number of fatalities charted being substantially larger than earlier projections, it likely fails to capture the full scale of Palestinian loss, according to the head of the prisoners and detainees department.

“Although we are providing evidence for a larger total of deaths than previously reported, this is not the entire story,” he said. “We are sure that there are yet detainees who perished in custody that we have not identified.”

Non-Combatant Fatalities

Restricted Israeli data indicates that the largest portion of incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza who lost their lives in detention were non-combatants, per a simultaneous investigation.

During May of 2024, a defense forces registry following all combatants in Gaza, a roster of over 47,000 listed people, documented merely 21 casualties in detention. At that time, 65 Palestinians from Gaza had lost their lives in prison.

Custodial Environment

Brutality, torture, and further cruelty of Palestinians has become routine across Israel’s detention facilities over 24 months of hostilities. High-ranking authorities have openly admitted inadequate food and an underground jail detaining Palestinians who never see daylight.

Existing and previous inmates and whistleblowers from the defense forces have uniformly asserted widespread breaches of human rights protocols.

Institutionalized Cruelty

The organized mistreatment was accompanied by a disturbing rise in deaths documented across a minimum of 12 detention centers in Israel. Over ten years prior to the conflict, there were on average a couple casualties a year.

“This isn’t just an individual case here and there. It is widespread and it is likely to persist,” a spokesperson commented, in part due to the fact there is a culture of almost complete immunity for fatalities and maltreatment of Palestinians.

Only a single instance of assaulting inmates has come to trial, with the service member handed a punishment to half a year. An attempt to charge others over a brutal attack featuring sexual violence caused right-wing protests and the detention of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the alleged perpetrators now insisting that allegations against them be withdrawn.

Absence of Consequences

“Regardless of this large quantity of deaths, during 24 months not a single person has been arrested,” the spokesperson stated. “There are no charges over any death.

“As long as these measures remain in effect, every Palestinian in detention faces risk, also the those in good health, including the juveniles who have no medical issues.”

High-Profile Cases

Certain fatalities in detention have been high profile, including a 50-year-old medical chief who perished in prison after a third of a year in confinement.

A detainee held with the individual testified that he was led to the exercise area by guards shortly before his passing, clearly wounded and exposed from the hips downward. His remains has not been returned to Gaza.

Other prisoners who perished in Israeli custody remain anonymous. The prison service and military supplied investigators with the figure of casualties in confinement, and basic further data including the location where they perished, but without the prisoners’ names.

Identification Challenges

For 21 instances, mainly people from Gaza, investigators could not to correlate the few details given by authorities to a casualty registered by rights organisations, via accounts from freed prisoners or coverage in the press.

The prisoners’ relatives may not know about their relatives’ casualties also, as Israel has made it difficult to monitor Palestinians it is confining. Over half a year at the start of the hostilities, the Israeli military declined to give basic information about the whereabouts of thousands of persons confined in Gaza, in effect carrying out a policy of forced disappearance, according to the human rights group.

Limited Transparency

Beginning last May, government bodies have provided an digital correspondence for requests about detainees from Gaza, but this has provided only a modest and inadequate improvement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on