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Based on figures from Israel, at least 98 detainees from Palestine have died while in custody beginning in October 2023. A rights monitoring body based in Israel has indicated that the true number is likely significantly greater, due to many of disappeared individuals in Gaza.

Investigation Outcomes

A new investigation documented fatalities resulting from assault, failure to provide medical care, and inadequate nutrition. Researchers utilized freedom of information requests, autopsy findings, and testimonies with lawyers, activists, family members, and observers.

Government bodies provided comprehensive data only for the first eight months of the hostilities. Throughout these months, government statistics show an historically high fatality rate among Palestinian prisoners, averaging a single fatality each 96 hours.

Updated Statistics

Israeli defense forces last updated information on deaths in detention for May 2024, and correctional authorities during September 2024. Analysts identified an additional 35 casualties in detention following these dates and validated them with official sources.

Even with the aggregate figure of casualties documented being substantially larger than previous assessments, it likely omits the full scale of Palestinian casualties, per the leader of the prisoner monitoring division.

“While we are offering documentation for a larger total of fatalities than previously reported, this is not the entire story,” he stated. “We are sure that there are even now people who perished in confinement that we have not identified.”

Civilian Casualties

Restricted official information shows that the majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who lost their lives in detention were civilians, according to a related inquiry.

In May of this year, a defense forces registry following all fighters in Gaza, a registry of more than 47,000 listed people, documented just 21 deaths in custody. By that point, 65 Gazans from Gaza had lost their lives in prison.

Detention Conditions

Assault, abuse, and further cruelty of Palestinians is now standard practice across Israel’s prison network during the duration of hostilities. Top government figures have publicly acknowledged starvation rations and an below-ground detention center detaining Palestinian individuals who are denied sunlight.

Existing and previous detainees and insiders from the defense forces have all alleged systemic violations of human rights protocols.

Systemic Abuse

The systematic abuse occurred alongside a troubling surge in casualties recorded across at least 12 detention centers in Israel. In the decade prior to the hostilities, there were on average several deaths a year.

“This is not merely an isolated incident occasionally. It is institutional and it is expected to endure,” an official said, in part because there is a climate of almost complete immunity for killing and mistreating Palestinians.

Just one case of assaulting detainees has come to trial, with the military personnel given a penalty to 210 days. An attempt to try others over a brutal attack involving sexual violence resulted in political demonstrations and the arrest of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the accused individuals now insisting that charges against them be dismissed.

Absence of Consequences

“Regardless of this significant total of casualties, during 24 months no one has been detained,” the representative said. “There are no charges over any fatality.

“As long as these practices are being applied, each Palestinian individual in custody is in danger, also the healthy ones, also the young ones who have no underlying conditions.”

Prominent Examples

Some deaths in confinement have been widely reported, for instance a 50-year-old healthcare leader who perished in detention after a third of a year in confinement.

An inmate incarcerated with the victim reported that he was led to the yard by prison staff shortly before his death, obviously hurt and unclothed from the waist down. His corpse has not been returned to Gaza.

Further inmates who perished in detention in Israel stay unnamed. Correctional authorities and armed services provided analysts with the number of fatalities in detention, and minimal additional information such as the site where they died, but not the inmates’ personal details.

Documentation Problems

For 21 instances, mainly individuals from Gaza, analysts were not able to match the minimal data provided by authorities to a fatality documented by human rights groups, via testimony from former inmates or accounts in the news outlets.

The detainees’ families may not know about their family members’ fatalities as well, as Israel has made it difficult to monitor detainees it is holding. Over half a year at the beginning of the conflict, the defense forces refused to supply fundamental details about the status of numerous of individuals held in Gaza, in effect carrying out a policy of unacknowledged detention, as stated by the rights monitoring body.

Insufficient Disclosure

From May 2024, government bodies have created an email address for enquiries about detainees from Gaza, but this has resulted in merely a modest and inadequate improvement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on