Based on figures released by Israel, a minimum of 98 Palestinians have lost their lives while detained beginning in October 2023. A rights monitoring body operating from Israel has stated that the true number is almost certainly considerably higher, as a result of hundreds of disappeared individuals in Gaza.
A new investigation documented casualties caused by physical violence, medical neglect, and starvation. Analysts employed freedom of information requests, autopsy findings, and discussions with lawyers, human rights defenders, next of kin, and witnesses.
Official sources provided comprehensive statistics solely covering the opening period of the war. Over this period, government statistics reveal an unprecedented casualty rate among Palestinian detainees, amounting to a life lost each 96 hours.
Official armed forces most recently revised information on deaths in detention for May 2024, and detention administration in September 2024. Analysts identified an additional 35 fatalities in custody after these dates and confirmed them with Israeli authorities.
Even with the overall count of fatalities charted being substantially larger than other recent estimates, it almost certainly omits the full scale of Palestinian casualties, per the leader of the prisoners and detainees department.
“Even though we are providing evidence for a higher number of casualties than earlier indicated, this is an incomplete account,” he said. “We are sure that there are yet individuals who lost their lives in custody that we are unaware of.”
Confidential official information indicates that the largest portion of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who lost their lives in jail were ordinary citizens, according to a parallel examination.
By May of 2024, a military intelligence database following all militants in Gaza, a roster of over 47,000 identified persons, documented just 21 casualties in detention. By that point, 65 individuals from Palestine from Gaza had died in prison.
Physical violence, mistreatment, and further cruelty of detainees from Palestine is now standard practice across Israel’s detention facilities over two years of hostilities. Top government figures have openly admitted inadequate food and an subterranean prison holding Palestinian individuals who never see daylight.
Current and former prisoners and whistleblowers from the armed services have collectively claimed widespread breaches of international law.
The institutionalised cruelty was accompanied by a troubling surge in deaths registered across a minimum of 12 prison sites in Israel. During the previous decade before the hostilities, there were on average a couple casualties a year.
“This is not merely an isolated incident occasionally. It is institutional and it is likely to persist,” an official stated, partly because there is a climate of almost complete immunity for fatalities and maltreatment of Palestinians.
Merely one incident of attacking detainees has come to trial, with the soldier handed a punishment to seven months. An effort to try additional individuals over a severe beating involving assault led to political demonstrations and the apprehension of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the alleged perpetrators now insisting that charges against them are dropped.
“In spite of this large quantity of fatalities, over two years no one has been arrested,” the official stated. “There have been no prosecutions over any killing.
“While these policies remain in effect, each Palestinian individual in custody is at peril, including the those in good health, including the young ones who have no medical issues.”
Some deaths in custody have been widely reported, for instance a 50-year-old hospital director who died in confinement after a third of a year in confinement.
A prisoner detained alongside the deceased stated that he was brought to the yard by guards just prior to his passing, clearly wounded and unclothed from the waist down. His corpse remains unreleased to Gaza.
Other prisoners who perished in confinement by Israeli authorities remain anonymous. Correctional authorities and defense forces supplied researchers with the number of deaths in detention, and minimal other details including the site where they died, but excluding the inmates’ personal details.
For 21 instances, primarily people from Gaza, analysts were not able to match the few details supplied by government bodies to a casualty registered by rights organisations, by means of accounts from former inmates or reporting in the media.
The prisoners’ relatives may not know about their relatives’ casualties either, as Israel has made it difficult to locate Palestinian individuals it is confining. Over half a year at the start of the hostilities, the armed services would not provide to give basic information about the condition of thousands of individuals detained in Gaza, in effect implementing a policy of forced disappearance, per the advocacy organization.
Beginning last May, officials have provided an email address for requests about detainees from Gaza, but this has resulted in merely a partial and limited improvement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on
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