🔗 Share this article

According to data provided by Israel, no fewer than 98 Palestinians have perished while detained since October 2023. A human rights group located in Israel has stated that the true number is likely substantially greater, due to numerous of disappeared people in Gaza.

Report Findings

A new investigation documented fatalities caused by brutality, medical neglect, and starvation. Analysts used transparency petitions, autopsy findings, and testimonies with legal representatives, advocates, family members, and observers.

Israeli authorities provided complete statistics limited to the opening period of the hostilities. Throughout these months, reported numbers reveal an unprecedented casualty rate among Palestinian prisoners, equating to a single fatality every four days.

Recent Figures

Israeli defense forces last updated information on custodial deaths for May 2024, and detention administration by September 2024. Investigators identified a further 35 fatalities in detention subsequent to these periods and validated them with official sources.

Despite the overall count of casualties documented being substantially larger than earlier projections, it almost certainly does not reflect the full scale of losses among Palestinians, as stated by the head of the detainee affairs unit.

“While we are presenting proof for a greater figure of fatalities than earlier indicated, this is an incomplete account,” he stated. “We are certain that there are even now individuals who perished in detention that we don’t know about.”

Non-Combatant Fatalities

Classified Israeli data suggests that the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who died in jail were non-combatants, per a simultaneous inquiry.

By May of 2024, a armed services record monitoring all fighters in Gaza, a registry of over 47,000 named individuals, listed only 21 fatalities in custody. At that time, 65 individuals from Palestine from Gaza had died in prison.

Detention Conditions

Brutality, mistreatment, and other abuse of detainees from Palestine is now standard practice across Israel’s prison network throughout 24 months of war. High-ranking authorities have publicly acknowledged inadequate food and an subterranean prison detaining Palestinian individuals who never see daylight.

Existing and previous prisoners and insiders from the defense forces have collectively claimed routine infractions of international law.

Systemic Abuse

The institutionalised cruelty occurred alongside a troubling surge in deaths recorded across at least 12 detention centers in Israel. Over ten years before the war, there were typically several casualties a year.

“This is not merely an isolated incident here and there. It is systemic and it is expected to endure,” a spokesperson said, in part since there is a culture of almost complete immunity for fatalities and maltreatment of Palestinian individuals.

Just one case of assaulting detainees has proceeded to court, with the service member given a penalty to 210 days. An effort to prosecute others over a vicious assault featuring abuse caused right-wing protests and the arrest of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the accused individuals now requesting that charges against them be dismissed.

Lack of Accountability

“Despite this significant total of deaths, over two years no one has been arrested,” the representative stated. “There are no indictments over any death.

“During the time these practices remain in effect, every Palestinian in confinement is at peril, also the healthy ones, also the juveniles who have no health problems.”

Prominent Examples

Certain fatalities in confinement have been publicly known, including a middle-aged healthcare leader who died in confinement after 120 days in confinement.

An inmate detained alongside the individual testified that he was taken to the yard by prison staff just prior to his demise, visibly injured and exposed from the lower body. His remains remains unreleased to Gaza.

Additional detainees who lost their lives in confinement by Israeli authorities remain anonymous. The prison service and defense forces supplied investigators with the figure of deaths in custody, and minimal further data including the facility where they died, but excluding the inmates’ personal details.

Documentation Problems

Regarding 21 occurrences, mostly detainees from Gaza, researchers were not able to connect the minimal data supplied by officials to a casualty recorded by rights organisations, either through accounts from released detainees or coverage in the media.

The detainees’ families might not have learned about their loved ones’ deaths also, as Israel has made it difficult to locate Palestinian individuals it is detaining. For seven months at the beginning of the conflict, the armed services declined to supply essential data about the condition of numerous of persons held in Gaza, effectively enacting a policy of involuntary missing persons, according to the human rights group.

Insufficient Disclosure

Starting in May 2024, government bodies have created an digital correspondence for enquiries about detainees from Gaza, but this has resulted in merely a partial and limited enhancement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on