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Per figures provided by Israel, a minimum of 98 Palestinians have died while in custody since October 2023. A human rights group located in Israel has indicated that the actual toll is almost certainly significantly larger, due to numerous of unaccounted for detainees originating in Gaza.

Study Results

An updated study recorded deaths caused by brutality, failure to provide medical care, and starvation. Investigators employed transparency petitions, medical examiner documents, and testimonies with attorneys, activists, relatives, and observers.

Israeli authorities disclosed complete statistics only for the initial 240 days of the hostilities. Throughout these months, reported numbers indicate an record casualty rate among detained Palestinians, averaging a single fatality every four days.

Updated Statistics

The military most recently revised data on deaths in detention for May 2024, and correctional authorities by September 2024. Researchers identified an additional 35 fatalities in detention following these timeframes and confirmed them with government bodies.

Despite the overall count of deaths documented being much greater than earlier projections, it almost certainly fails to capture the full scale of Palestinian casualties, per the leader of the detainee affairs unit.

“While we are presenting proof for a higher number of fatalities than earlier indicated, this is not the entire story,” he explained. “We are confident that there are yet detainees who perished in custody that we don’t know about.”

Civilian Casualties

Restricted Israeli data suggests that the majority of Palestinian detainees from Gaza who perished in prison were non-combatants, based on a parallel investigation.

During May of the current year, a defense forces registry monitoring all combatants in Gaza, a registry of in excess of 47,000 named individuals, recorded only 21 fatalities in confinement. By that date, 65 Gazans from Gaza had perished in prison.

Prison Situation

Brutality, torture, and further cruelty of Palestinian individuals has been normalised across Israel’s prison network during 24 months of hostilities. Senior officials have publicly referenced inadequate food and an subterranean prison holding detainees who never see daylight.

Current and former detainees and whistleblowers from the Israeli military have uniformly asserted routine infractions of international law.

Systemic Abuse

The systematic abuse was accompanied by a disturbing rise in deaths registered across a minimum of 12 detention centers in Israel. Over ten years before the war, there were typically two or three casualties a year.

“This does not represent just an individual case here and there. It is institutional and it is likely to persist,” an official said, in part due to the fact there is a environment of almost complete immunity for killing and mistreating Palestinians.

Merely one incident of attacking detainees has reached litigation, with the service member sentenced to half a year. An effort to charge other suspects over a severe beating featuring abuse caused public rallies and the arrest of Israel’s chief legal officer, with the alleged perpetrators now insisting that indictments against them be withdrawn.

No Legal Action

“Regardless of this large quantity of fatalities, over two years not a single person has been detained,” the representative stated. “There are no prosecutions over any death.

“While these policies continue to be enforced, every Palestinian in detention is in danger, even the healthy ones, even the young ones who have no medical issues.”

High-Profile Cases

Some deaths in detention have been publicly known, such as a senior healthcare leader who died in prison after a third of a year in custody.

A detainee held with the victim stated that he was taken to the yard by prison staff shortly before his demise, clearly wounded and exposed from the waist down. His remains has not been repatriated to Gaza.

Further inmates who lost their lives in Israeli custody stay unnamed. The prison service and armed services supplied researchers with the figure of deaths in custody, and basic other details including the site where they lost their lives, but not the inmates’ personal details.

Identification Challenges

In 21 cases, primarily detainees from Gaza, analysts were unable to correlate the few details supplied by government bodies to a fatality registered by rights organisations, either through accounts from former inmates or reporting in the press.

The inmates’ next of kin may not know about their family members’ fatalities either, as Israel has created obstacles to track Palestinian individuals it is holding. During 210 days at the beginning of the war, the armed services declined to give basic information about the whereabouts of thousands of people detained in Gaza, practically enacting a policy of unacknowledged detention, according to the human rights group.

Restricted Access

Beginning last May, authorities have created an electronic contact for requests about Palestinian individuals from Gaza, but this has provided only a modest and inadequate enhancement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on