A Minimum of 98 Palestinians Have Died in Israeli Custody Since October 2023, Official Figures Shows
According to data from Israel, no fewer than 98 detainees from Palestine have died during detention since October 2023. A human rights group based in Israel has indicated that the true toll is almost certainly significantly higher, as a result of hundreds of disappeared people from Gaza.
Report Findings
A new investigation recorded fatalities attributed to brutality, lack of healthcare, and malnutrition. Researchers employed freedom of information requests, autopsy findings, and testimonies with lawyers, human rights defenders, next of kin, and witnesses.
Government bodies released comprehensive statistics solely covering the first eight months of the hostilities. During this time, official figures reveal an record death toll among Palestinian detainees, amounting to a single fatality each 96 hours.
Recent Figures
Official armed forces most recently revised data on detention fatalities for May 2024, and the prison service in September 2024. Investigators discovered a further 35 deaths in custody after these timeframes and validated them with government bodies.
Although the total number of casualties documented being much greater than earlier projections, it almost certainly fails to capture the full scale of losses among Palestinians, as stated by the director of the prisoners and detainees department.
“While we are providing evidence for a greater figure of fatalities than previously reported, this is an incomplete account,” he said. “We are sure that there are still people who perished in detention that we don’t know about.”
Non-Combatant Fatalities
Confidential Israeli data indicates that the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who died in prison were ordinary citizens, according to a simultaneous investigation.
During May of 2024, a armed services record monitoring all militants in Gaza, a roster of over 47,000 listed people, recorded only 21 fatalities in detention. By that date, 65 Gazans from Gaza had died in detention.
Custodial Environment
Brutality, abuse, and further cruelty of detainees from Palestine has become routine across Israel’s detention facilities during two years of conflict. High-ranking authorities have publicly referenced inadequate food and an underground jail confining Palestinian individuals who are denied sunlight.
Existing and previous detainees and whistleblowers from the armed services have uniformly asserted widespread breaches of human rights protocols.
Institutionalized Cruelty
The institutionalised cruelty was accompanied by a troubling surge in deaths recorded across no fewer than 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. Over ten years preceding the hostilities, there were typically two or three deaths a year.
“This is not merely an isolated incident sporadically. It is widespread and it is expected to endure,” a spokesperson stated, in part since there is a culture of near total impunity for harming and abusing detainees.
Merely one incident of assaulting inmates has come to trial, with the military personnel given a penalty to seven months. An attempt to prosecute additional individuals over a vicious assault including assault caused right-wing protests and the arrest of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the accused individuals now demanding that charges against them be withdrawn.
No Legal Action
“Regardless of this significant total of deaths, over two years no one has been arrested,” the representative noted. “There exist no charges over any killing.
“While these measures continue to be enforced, each Palestinian individual in custody is at peril, including the physically well individuals, including the young ones who have no medical issues.”
High-Profile Cases
Some deaths in custody have been high profile, for instance a middle-aged medical chief who perished in detention after 120 days in confinement.
An inmate held with the victim stated that he was brought to the courtyard by guards just prior to his passing, clearly wounded and exposed from the waist down. His remains has not been repatriated to Gaza.
Other prisoners who died in Israeli custody remain anonymous. Correctional authorities and armed services provided investigators with the total of deaths in detention, and basic other details including the location where they lost their lives, but excluding the inmates’ personal details.
Documentation Problems
For 21 instances, mostly individuals from Gaza, researchers were unable to correlate the minimal data provided by officials to a fatality recorded by rights organisations, by means of testimony from freed prisoners or reporting in the press.
The prisoners’ relatives could be unaware about their family members’ fatalities also, as Israel has made it difficult to locate detainees it is holding. For seven months at the beginning of the conflict, the Israeli military would not provide to provide basic information about the status of many of people confined in Gaza, effectively implementing a approach of forced disappearance, per the advocacy organization.
Limited Transparency
From May 2024, government bodies have created an digital correspondence for enquiries about detainees from Gaza, but this has provided only a modest and inadequate improvement. Analysts noted|observed|commented on