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Based on information from Israel, no fewer than 98 Palestinian individuals have died while in custody beginning in October 2023. A human rights group operating from Israel has stated that the real figure is likely substantially higher, because of many of missing people in Gaza.

Report Findings

An updated study documented casualties resulting from assault, medical neglect, and inadequate nutrition. Researchers employed transparency petitions, forensic reports, and testimonies with attorneys, advocates, family members, and eyewitnesses.

Government bodies provided detailed data solely covering the initial 240 days of the conflict. Throughout these months, reported numbers show an record death toll among detained Palestinians, averaging one death every four days.

Latest Data

Official armed forces finalized records on custodial deaths for May 2024, and correctional authorities in September 2024. Investigators identified an additional 35 casualties in confinement following these periods and confirmed them with Israeli authorities.

Although the aggregate figure of casualties documented being substantially larger than earlier projections, it almost certainly omits the full scale of losses among Palestinians, according to the leader of the prisoners and detainees department.

“Even though we are offering documentation for a greater figure of deaths than once estimated, this is an incomplete account,” he stated. “We are certain that there are even now people who perished in custody that we are unaware of.”

Non-Combatant Fatalities

Confidential Israeli data suggests that the largest portion of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who died in prison were civilians, according to a parallel inquiry.

During May of this year, a military intelligence database tracking all combatants in Gaza, a roster of more than 47,000 named individuals, recorded merely 21 deaths in custody. By that point, 65 individuals from Palestine from Gaza had died in prison.

Custodial Environment

Assault, abuse, and other abuse of Palestinian individuals is now standard practice across Israel’s prison network throughout the duration of hostilities. Top government figures have openly admitted starvation rations and an below-ground detention center holding Palestinians who are kept in darkness.

Existing and previous prisoners and whistleblowers from the armed services have all alleged widespread breaches of global standards.

Organized Maltreatment

The organized mistreatment was accompanied by a alarming increase in deaths registered across a minimum of 12 detention centers in Israel. In the decade preceding the war, there were typically two or three deaths a year.

“This is not just an individual case here and there. It is institutional and it will continue,” a spokesperson commented, in part since there is a culture of near total impunity for fatalities and maltreatment of detainees.

Merely one incident of beating prisoners has come to trial, with the service member handed a punishment to seven months. An effort to prosecute additional individuals over a brutal attack involving assault led to public rallies and the arrest of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the alleged perpetrators now requesting that allegations against them be dismissed.

No Legal Action

“Despite this mass number of casualties, over two years not one individual has faced arrest,” the representative noted. “There exist no prosecutions over any killing.

“While these practices are being applied, all Palestinian detainees in detention is at peril, also the those in good health, also the juveniles who have no underlying conditions.”

Prominent Examples

Some deaths in detention have been publicly known, such as a middle-aged medical chief who died in prison after four months in detention.

A prisoner detained alongside the deceased testified that he was led to the yard by correctional officers shortly before his passing, clearly wounded and exposed from the waist down. His corpse has not been repatriated to Gaza.

Additional detainees who lost their lives in detention in Israel remain anonymous. The prison service and defense forces provided researchers with the figure of fatalities in custody, and limited additional information for example the site where they perished, but without the detainees’ identities.

Identification Challenges

In 21 cases, mostly people from Gaza, investigators were not able to connect the limited information supplied by officials to a death recorded by rights organisations, via statements from former inmates or reporting in the news outlets.

The detainees’ families might not have learned about their relatives’ casualties either, as Israel has made it difficult to locate Palestinian individuals it is confining. During 210 days at the outset of the war, the armed services would not provide to give basic information about the whereabouts of thousands of people confined in Gaza, effectively enacting a practice of involuntary missing persons, as stated by the advocacy organization.

Restricted Access

Beginning last May, officials have created an electronic contact for requests about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has provided only a partial and limited enhancement. Researchers noted|observed|commented on