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Based on information released by Israel, at least 98 Palestinian individuals have died while detained beginning in October 2023. A rights monitoring body based in Israel has stated that the real figure is almost certainly substantially larger, due to many of disappeared individuals originating in Gaza.

Study Results

A recent report documented casualties resulting from brutality, medical neglect, and starvation. Investigators utilized transparency petitions, medical examiner documents, and interviews with legal representatives, activists, next of kin, and observers.

Israeli authorities disclosed detailed information limited to the initial 240 days of the conflict. Throughout these months, government statistics indicate an historically high fatality rate among Palestinian prisoners, amounting to a life lost each 96 hours.

Latest Data

Israeli defense forces last updated data on custodial deaths for May 2024, and detention administration in September 2024. Researchers identified another 35 casualties in confinement after these timeframes and validated them with official sources.

Even with the overall count of deaths documented being much greater than previous assessments, it likely fails to capture the entire scope of Palestinian loss, according to the director of the prisoners and detainees department.

“Even though we are providing evidence for a higher number of casualties than once estimated, this is an incomplete account,” he explained. “We are confident that there are still people who perished in confinement that we don’t know about.”

Non-Combatant Fatalities

Restricted Israeli data shows that the vast majority of Palestinian detainees from Gaza who lost their lives in prison were non-combatants, per a related investigation.

By May of the current year, a military intelligence database tracking all combatants in Gaza, a roster of more than 47,000 identified persons, recorded only 21 casualties in confinement. By that point, 65 Palestinians from Gaza had lost their lives in prison.

Detention Conditions

Assault, mistreatment, and additional maltreatment of Palestinians has become routine across Israel’s jail system during 24 months of hostilities. Senior officials have publicly acknowledged minimal sustenance and an subterranean prison confining Palestinians who are kept in darkness.

Present and past detainees and insiders from the Israeli military have uniformly asserted routine infractions of international law.

Organized Maltreatment

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 war, there were on average several casualties a year.

“This isn’t just an individual case here and there. It is institutional and it is expected to endure,” an official said, in part because there is a climate of near total impunity for killing and mistreating Palestinians.

Only a single instance of attacking prisoners has come to trial, with the service member sentenced to 210 days. An attempt to prosecute additional individuals over a brutal attack featuring assault led to public rallies and the detention of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the alleged perpetrators now demanding that charges against them are dropped.

Absence of Consequences

“In spite of this mass number of deaths, over two years not one individual has been arrested,” the official noted. “There exist no indictments over any fatality.

“During the time these policies continue to be enforced, each Palestinian individual in detention is at peril, also the healthy ones, including the juveniles who have no medical issues.”

High-Profile Cases

Several casualties in custody have been widely reported, such as a senior medical chief who died in prison after a third of a year in confinement.

A detainee held with the deceased stated that he was brought to the courtyard by prison staff just prior to his death, clearly wounded and naked from the hips downward. His corpse has not been returned to Gaza.

Other prisoners who perished in confinement by Israeli authorities remain anonymous. Detention administrators and armed services gave analysts with the number of casualties in detention, and limited additional information for example the location where they lost their lives, but without the detainees’ identities.

Documentation Problems

Regarding 21 occurrences, mainly detainees from Gaza, analysts were not able to connect the minimal data supplied by officials to a death recorded by advocacy bodies, via accounts from released detainees or accounts in the press.

The prisoners’ relatives may not know about their relatives’ casualties as well, as Israel has impeded efforts to track detainees it is confining. For seven months at the start of the hostilities, the armed services declined to supply fundamental details about the status of numerous of people held in Gaza, in effect carrying out a practice of unacknowledged detention, per the rights monitoring body.

Insufficient Disclosure

Starting in May 2024, government bodies have provided an email address for requests about detainees from Gaza, but this has provided only a partial and limited betterment. Researchers noted|observed|commented on