🔗 Share this article

Based on figures provided by Israel, at least 98 detainees from Palestine have lost their lives during detention beginning in October 2023. A rights monitoring body operating from Israel has stated that the real figure is almost certainly significantly larger, as a result of numerous of disappeared detainees in Gaza.

Report Findings

A new investigation recorded fatalities caused by physical violence, lack of healthcare, and starvation. Researchers employed official data requests, forensic reports, and testimonies with attorneys, advocates, relatives, and witnesses.

Israeli authorities provided comprehensive data only for the first eight months of the conflict. During this time, reported numbers show an unprecedented fatality rate among detained Palestinians, amounting to a life lost every four days.

Updated Statistics

The military last updated data on detention fatalities for May 2024, and correctional authorities by September 2024. Analysts documented another 35 deaths in detention after these dates and verified them with official sources.

Even with the overall count of fatalities charted being much greater than earlier projections, it almost certainly fails to capture the complete extent of losses among Palestinians, according to the head of the prisoners and detainees department.

“Although we are offering documentation for a larger total of fatalities than earlier indicated, this is not the entire story,” he stated. “We are confident that there are even now people who died in confinement that we are unaware of.”

Civilian Casualties

Confidential official information indicates that the vast majority of Palestinian detainees from Gaza who perished in jail were ordinary citizens, according to a parallel investigation.

By May of this year, a military intelligence database following all combatants in Gaza, a registry of over 47,000 listed people, recorded just 21 fatalities in custody. By that date, 65 Palestinians from Gaza had died in detention.

Detention Conditions

Assault, abuse, and further cruelty of detainees from Palestine has become routine across Israel’s detention facilities during 24 months of war. Top government figures have publicly acknowledged inadequate food and an underground jail confining detainees who never see daylight.

Existing and previous detainees and informants from the Israeli military have collectively claimed routine infractions of global standards.

Institutionalized Cruelty

The organized mistreatment was accompanied by a disturbing rise in fatalities registered across at least 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. In the decade before the war, there were on average two or three casualties a year.

“This isn’t just an individual case sporadically. It is institutional and it will continue,” an official said, partially due to the fact there is a culture of almost complete immunity for killing and mistreating Palestinian individuals.

Merely one incident of attacking detainees has reached litigation, with the soldier handed a punishment to half a year. An effort to charge others over a brutal attack featuring sexual violence caused political demonstrations and the apprehension of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the suspects now demanding that indictments against them be withdrawn.

Absence of Consequences

“In spite of this large quantity of fatalities, during 24 months not a single person has faced arrest,” the representative said. “There exist no charges over any fatality.

“As long as these policies remain in effect, all Palestinian detainees in confinement is in danger, including the healthy ones, also the juveniles who have no medical issues.”

Prominent Examples

Several casualties in detention have been publicly known, such as a 50-year-old healthcare leader who died in confinement after a third of a year in confinement.

An inmate incarcerated with the individual stated that he was taken to the yard by guards immediately preceding his passing, clearly wounded and unclothed from the waist down. His body remains unreleased to Gaza.

Further inmates who died in detention in Israel remain anonymous. Correctional authorities and defense forces provided investigators with the figure of fatalities in detention, and basic other details such as the location where they perished, but excluding the detainees’ identities.

Documentation Problems

In 21 cases, primarily individuals from Gaza, investigators were not able to correlate the minimal data supplied by government bodies to a casualty registered by rights organisations, by means of testimony from former inmates or coverage in the media.

The detainees’ families might not have learned about their loved ones’ deaths either, as Israel has made it difficult to monitor detainees it is holding. For seven months at the outset of the conflict, the armed services declined to give essential data about the condition of thousands of people held in Gaza, practically carrying out a approach of involuntary missing persons, according to the advocacy organization.

Restricted Access

From May 2024, officials have provided an email address for inquiries about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has provided only a modest and inadequate improvement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on