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According to figures from Israel, a minimum of 98 Palestinian individuals have perished during detention beginning in October 2023. A rights monitoring body based in Israel has indicated that the true figure is almost certainly considerably greater, because of many of missing detainees originating in Gaza.

Investigation Outcomes

A new investigation documented fatalities resulting from physical violence, failure to provide medical care, and inadequate nutrition. Researchers employed official data requests, medical examiner documents, and discussions with legal representatives, human rights defenders, family members, and witnesses.

Official sources provided detailed information solely covering the opening period of the war. Throughout these months, government statistics show an unprecedented death toll among detained Palestinians, amounting to a single fatality each 96 hours.

Recent Figures

The military most recently revised data on custodial deaths for May 2024, and the prison service during September 2024. Researchers documented an additional 35 fatalities in confinement after these timeframes and validated them with government bodies.

Although the aggregate figure of deaths recorded being substantially larger than previous assessments, it likely omits the entire scope of losses among Palestinians, per the head of the prisoners and detainees department.

“While we are providing evidence for a larger total of casualties than earlier indicated, this is an incomplete account,” he said. “We are certain that there are yet individuals who died in detention that we are unaware of.”

Civilian Deaths

Classified Israeli data shows that the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who lost their lives in detention were non-combatants, based on a simultaneous examination.

By May of 2024, a defense forces registry following all fighters in Gaza, a list of in excess of 47,000 listed people, recorded just 21 casualties in detention. By that date, 65 Palestinians from Gaza had lost their lives in prison.

Detention Conditions

Assault, torture, and further cruelty of detainees from Palestine has become routine across Israel’s jail system during two years of conflict. High-ranking authorities have publicly referenced inadequate food and an below-ground detention center confining detainees who never see daylight.

Current and former prisoners and informants from the armed services have uniformly asserted systemic violations of international law.

Organized Maltreatment

The institutionalised cruelty came with a disturbing rise in casualties registered across no fewer than 12 detention centers in Israel. In the decade before the conflict, there were on average a couple deaths a year.

“This is not just an individual case occasionally. It is systemic and it is likely to persist,” a spokesperson said, partially because there is a climate of near total impunity for killing and mistreating detainees.

Merely one incident of assaulting inmates has proceeded to court, with the soldier given a penalty to 210 days. An effort to prosecute additional individuals over a brutal attack including assault resulted in public rallies and the detention of Israel’s chief legal officer, with the alleged perpetrators now demanding that allegations against them be withdrawn.

No Legal Action

“Regardless of this mass number of deaths, over two years not one individual has been arrested,” the spokesperson said. “There have been no prosecutions over any killing.

“While these practices remain in effect, each Palestinian individual in confinement is in danger, including the healthy ones, including the young ones who have no underlying conditions.”

Prominent Examples

Some deaths in detention have been publicly known, for instance a senior hospital director who died in confinement after 120 days in detention.

An inmate held with the victim testified that he was led to the exercise area by prison staff immediately preceding his death, clearly wounded and exposed from the lower body. His corpse remains unreleased to Gaza.

Other prisoners who perished in detention in Israel are unidentified. Detention administrators and military supplied researchers with the figure of casualties in custody, and minimal other details including the site where they perished, but excluding the inmates’ personal details.

Identification Challenges

For 21 instances, mostly people from Gaza, researchers were not able to correlate the few details supplied by government bodies to a death recorded by human rights groups, either through accounts from former inmates or reporting in the press.

The inmates’ next of kin might not have learned about their loved ones’ deaths either, as Israel has impeded efforts to monitor Palestinian individuals it is confining. For seven months at the beginning of the conflict, the Israeli military refused to supply essential data about the whereabouts of many of individuals held in Gaza, practically carrying out a policy of unacknowledged detention, as stated by the rights monitoring body.

Limited Transparency

Starting in May 2024, government bodies have created an email address for inquiries about detainees from Gaza, but this has led to just a partial and limited improvement. Researchers noted|observed|commented on