🔗 Share this article

Per figures released by Israel, at least 98 Palestinians have perished during detention beginning in October 2023. An advocacy organization based in Israel has stated that the actual figure is almost certainly considerably greater, due to many of unaccounted for people originating in Gaza.

Report Findings

A new investigation tracked casualties resulting from assault, failure to provide medical care, and starvation. Analysts employed freedom of information requests, autopsy findings, and interviews with legal representatives, advocates, next of kin, and witnesses.

Israeli authorities released complete statistics limited to the first eight months of the conflict. During this time, government statistics reveal an historically high casualty rate among Palestinian detainees, amounting to a single fatality every four days.

Latest Data

Official armed forces most recently revised information on deaths in detention for May 2024, and the prison service by September 2024. Researchers documented another 35 casualties in confinement subsequent to these periods and validated them with government bodies.

Even with the overall count of deaths charted being substantially larger than previous assessments, it almost certainly omits the complete extent of Palestinian casualties, according to the leader of the detainee affairs unit.

“Even though we are providing evidence for a higher number of deaths than once estimated, this is not a full picture,” he said. “We are confident that there are still individuals who died in detention that we are unaware of.”

Civilian Deaths

Restricted official information suggests that the majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who lost their lives in prison were non-combatants, according to a simultaneous inquiry.

By May of the current year, a armed services record monitoring all combatants in Gaza, a list of in excess of 47,000 listed people, recorded merely 21 deaths in custody. At that time, 65 individuals from Palestine from Gaza had perished in jail.

Detention Conditions

Brutality, torture, and other abuse of Palestinian individuals has been normalised across Israel’s prison network throughout 24 months of conflict. High-ranking authorities have openly admitted minimal sustenance and an below-ground detention center detaining Palestinian individuals who are kept in darkness.

Current and former prisoners and informants from the Israeli military have uniformly asserted routine infractions of global standards.

Organized Maltreatment

The systematic abuse came with a disturbing rise in fatalities registered across at least 12 detention centers in Israel. During the previous decade before the war, there were on average several casualties a year.

“This isn’t only a single occurrence occasionally. It is systemic and it is likely to persist,” a spokesperson commented, partially due to the fact there is a climate of near total impunity for killing and mistreating detainees.

Merely one incident of assaulting inmates has reached litigation, with the service member handed a punishment to half a year. An effort to prosecute additional individuals over a vicious assault involving sexual violence led to public rallies and the detention of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the alleged perpetrators now requesting that charges against them be dismissed.

Lack of Accountability

“In spite of this large quantity of fatalities, over two years no one has been arrested,” the official said. “There are no prosecutions over any killing.

“As long as these policies remain in effect, each Palestinian individual in confinement is in danger, also the physically well individuals, also the juveniles who have no underlying conditions.”

Prominent Examples

Several casualties in confinement have been widely reported, for instance a senior healthcare leader who perished in detention after 120 days in custody.

A prisoner incarcerated with the victim stated that he was led to the yard by correctional officers shortly before his passing, clearly wounded and naked from the lower body. His body remains unreleased to Gaza.

Other prisoners who perished in Israeli custody remain anonymous. The prison service and defense forces provided researchers with the total of casualties in confinement, and minimal additional information including the site where they perished, but not the inmates’ personal details.

Identification Challenges

In 21 cases, primarily detainees from Gaza, researchers were unable to match the limited information given by authorities to a death documented by human rights groups, via statements from freed prisoners or coverage in the press.

The detainees’ families might not have learned about their relatives’ casualties either, as Israel has made it difficult to locate detainees it is holding. Over half a year at the start of the war, the defense forces refused to provide basic information about the whereabouts of many of people held in Gaza, effectively implementing a policy of unacknowledged detention, according to the human rights group.

Insufficient Disclosure

From May 2024, government bodies have created an digital correspondence for enquiries about Palestinian individuals from Gaza, but this has resulted in merely a partial and limited improvement. Analysts noted|observed|commented on