No Fewer Than 98 Palestinians Lost Their Lives in Custody Starting From October 2023, Israeli Data Shows
Based on figures from Israel, a minimum of 98 detainees from Palestine have died while in custody starting from October 2023. A rights monitoring body located in Israel has indicated that the actual toll is almost certainly significantly greater, because of hundreds of disappeared individuals in Gaza.
Report Findings
An updated study documented fatalities resulting from assault, lack of healthcare, and malnutrition. Researchers employed freedom of information requests, autopsy findings, and testimonies with legal representatives, activists, next of kin, and eyewitnesses.
Official sources provided complete statistics only for the opening period of the hostilities. During this time, official figures indicate an historically high fatality rate among Palestinian detainees, averaging a single fatality each 96 hours.
Latest Data
The military finalized records on custodial deaths for May 2024, and correctional authorities by September 2024. Investigators discovered a further 35 fatalities in detention after these timeframes and confirmed them with official sources.
Although the total number of fatalities recorded being substantially larger than previous assessments, it likely does not reflect the complete extent of Palestinian loss, per the director of the detainee affairs unit.
“Even though we are providing evidence for a greater figure of deaths than earlier indicated, this is not the entire story,” he said. “We are sure that there are even now detainees who died in custody that we don’t know about.”
Non-Combatant Fatalities
Restricted government records suggests that the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who lost their lives in detention were non-combatants, according to a related investigation.
In May of 2024, a military intelligence database monitoring all fighters in Gaza, a list of over 47,000 named individuals, listed only 21 casualties in custody. By that point, 65 Gazans from Gaza had perished in detention.
Detention Conditions
Brutality, mistreatment, and further cruelty of Palestinian individuals has been normalised across Israel’s detention facilities during two years of hostilities. Senior officials have openly admitted starvation rations and an below-ground detention center holding Palestinian individuals who are kept in darkness.
Current and former inmates and insiders from the defense forces have all alleged systemic violations of human rights protocols.
Systemic Abuse
The institutionalised cruelty occurred alongside a alarming increase in casualties recorded across a minimum of 12 detention centers in Israel. Over ten years prior to the conflict, there were on average several deaths a year.
“This is not just an individual case sporadically. It is institutional and it is likely to persist,” an official stated, partly because there is a environment of near total impunity for killing and mistreating Palestinians.
Only a single instance of assaulting prisoners has come to trial, with the soldier handed a punishment to half a year. An effort to prosecute additional individuals over a vicious assault including abuse caused political demonstrations and the detention of Israel’s chief legal officer, with the alleged perpetrators now insisting that indictments against them be dismissed.
No Legal Action
“In spite of this mass number of casualties, over two years not one individual has faced arrest,” the representative said. “There are no charges over any killing.
“During the time these practices continue to be enforced, each Palestinian individual in confinement is in danger, even the healthy ones, including the young ones who have no medical issues.”
High-Profile Cases
Some deaths in detention have been widely reported, such as a middle-aged hospital director who lost his life in confinement after four months in confinement.
A prisoner held with the individual testified that he was brought to the courtyard by guards just prior to his death, visibly injured and naked from the lower body. His remains has not been returned to Gaza.
Additional detainees who died in Israeli custody are unidentified. Correctional authorities and military supplied analysts with the figure of casualties in detention, and limited additional information for example the location where they lost their lives, but not the inmates’ personal details.
Documentation Problems
For 21 instances, mostly individuals from Gaza, analysts were unable to connect the minimal data provided by officials to a fatality registered by rights organisations, via accounts from released detainees or coverage in the news outlets.
The detainees’ families could be unaware about their family members’ fatalities also, as Israel has created obstacles to track detainees it is holding. During 210 days at the outset of the war, the Israeli military refused to give basic information about the condition of thousands of people held in Gaza, practically enacting a practice of unacknowledged detention, per the rights monitoring body.
Limited Transparency
Beginning last May, government bodies have established an electronic contact for enquiries about Palestinian individuals from Gaza, but this has provided only a partial and limited enhancement. Researchers noted|observed|commented on
