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Based on figures from Israel, a minimum of 98 Palestinians have died while in custody beginning in October 2023. A rights monitoring body based in Israel has indicated that the real figure is likely substantially higher, due to hundreds of missing detainees in Gaza.

Report Findings

An updated study tracked deaths resulting from assault, failure to provide medical care, and malnutrition. Analysts used freedom of information requests, medical examiner documents, and testimonies with lawyers, advocates, relatives, and observers.

Israeli authorities provided complete statistics limited to the first eight months of the conflict. Over this period, official figures show an record fatality rate among detained Palestinians, averaging a single fatality once every four-day period.

Latest Data

The military most recently revised information on deaths in detention for May 2024, and the prison service by September 2024. Investigators identified a further 35 fatalities in confinement after these timeframes and verified them with government bodies.

Even with the aggregate figure of casualties documented being substantially larger than previous assessments, it probably omits the full scale of losses among Palestinians, according to the leader of the prisoners and detainees department.

“Even though we are providing evidence for a greater figure of casualties than once estimated, this is not a full picture,” he stated. “We are sure that there are yet individuals who lost their lives in custody that we don’t know about.”

Civilian Casualties

Confidential Israeli data shows that the majority of incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza who lost their lives in prison were non-combatants, per a simultaneous investigation.

By May of this year, a defense forces registry monitoring all fighters in Gaza, a registry of in excess of 47,000 named individuals, recorded just 21 fatalities in confinement. At that time, 65 Palestinians from Gaza had lost their lives in detention.

Prison Situation

Assault, torture, and additional maltreatment of detainees from Palestine has become routine across Israel’s detention facilities throughout two years of war. High-ranking authorities have publicly acknowledged inadequate food and an underground jail detaining detainees who never see daylight.

Present and past detainees and insiders from the Israeli military have collectively claimed widespread breaches of human rights protocols.

Organized Maltreatment

The organized mistreatment came with a disturbing rise in deaths recorded across at least 12 detention centers in Israel. In the decade before the war, there were on average two or three fatalities a year.

“This isn’t just an individual case sporadically. It is systemic and it is expected to endure,” a spokesperson said, partly because there is a climate of almost complete immunity for fatalities and maltreatment of Palestinian individuals.

Merely one incident of beating detainees has come to trial, with the soldier given a penalty to 210 days. An effort to charge additional individuals over a vicious assault featuring sexual violence resulted in right-wing protests and the detention of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the suspects now insisting that charges against them are dropped.

Lack of Accountability

“In spite of this mass number of deaths, during 24 months not one individual has been detained,” the spokesperson noted. “There exist no prosecutions over any death.

“While these practices continue to be enforced, every Palestinian in detention is at peril, also the those in good health, including the young ones who have no underlying conditions.”

Notable Incidents

Several casualties in detention have been widely reported, for instance a middle-aged medical chief who lost his life in confinement after a third of a year in confinement.

An inmate incarcerated with the victim stated that he was taken to the courtyard by prison staff just prior to his demise, obviously hurt and naked from the hips downward. His corpse has not been returned to Gaza.

Other prisoners who died in confinement by Israeli authorities stay unnamed. The prison service and armed services supplied analysts with the figure of fatalities in confinement, and limited further data including the facility where they lost their lives, but without the inmates’ personal details.

Recognition Difficulties

In 21 cases, mostly people from Gaza, investigators could not to match the few details given by officials to a death documented by rights organisations, either through accounts from former inmates or coverage in the press.

The inmates’ next of kin might not have learned about their family members’ fatalities as well, as Israel has created obstacles to monitor detainees it is detaining. Over half a year at the start of the conflict, the Israeli military declined to supply fundamental details about the condition of thousands of individuals detained in Gaza, in effect carrying out a policy of forced disappearance, as stated by the human rights group.

Limited Transparency

From May 2024, authorities have established an email address for enquiries about detainees from Gaza, but this has led to just a modest and inadequate improvement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on