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Per figures released by Israel, at least 98 Palestinian individuals have perished while detained since October 2023. A rights monitoring body operating from Israel has reported that the real number is almost certainly significantly greater, as a result of numerous of disappeared detainees from Gaza.

Study Results

A recent report documented fatalities caused by assault, failure to provide medical care, and starvation. Investigators used official data requests, forensic reports, and interviews with legal representatives, human rights defenders, relatives, and observers.

Official sources provided complete information only for the first eight months of the conflict. Over this period, official figures reveal an unprecedented casualty rate among Palestinian prisoners, amounting to a single fatality each 96 hours.

Recent Figures

The military most recently revised records on custodial deaths for May 2024, and detention administration by September 2024. Researchers documented an additional 35 deaths in custody after these dates and confirmed them with government bodies.

Even with the overall count of casualties charted being much greater than previous assessments, it almost certainly omits the full scale of Palestinian casualties, according to the leader of the detainee affairs unit.

“Even though we are presenting proof for a larger total of casualties than previously reported, this is not the entire story,” he stated. “We are confident that there are yet people who perished in detention that we don’t know about.”

Civilian Casualties

Confidential official information indicates that the majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who died in detention were non-combatants, per a simultaneous inquiry.

By May of the current year, a defense forces registry following all militants in Gaza, a list of in excess of 47,000 named individuals, recorded just 21 casualties in custody. By that date, 65 Gazans from Gaza had lost their lives in detention.

Prison Situation

Brutality, torture, and additional maltreatment of Palestinians is now standard practice across Israel’s detention facilities throughout the duration of hostilities. Senior officials have openly admitted starvation rations and an underground jail holding detainees who are kept in darkness.

Present and past inmates and informants from the Israeli military have collectively claimed widespread breaches of global standards.

Institutionalized Cruelty

The organized mistreatment came with a alarming increase in fatalities registered across no fewer than 12 detention centers in Israel. In the decade prior to the conflict, there were on average two or three deaths a year.

“This does not represent just an individual case occasionally. It is systemic and it is likely to persist,” a representative commented, partly because there is a culture of almost complete immunity for killing and mistreating Palestinian individuals.

Just one case of beating detainees has proceeded to court, with the military personnel handed a punishment to half a year. An effort to prosecute additional individuals over a severe beating involving assault caused right-wing protests and the detention of Israel’s chief legal officer, with the alleged perpetrators now requesting that indictments against them be withdrawn.

Lack of Accountability

“In spite of this significant total of casualties, during 24 months no one has faced arrest,” the spokesperson said. “There exist no prosecutions over any fatality.

“As long as these practices continue to be enforced, all Palestinian detainees in custody is at peril, also the physically well individuals, also the juveniles who have no health problems.”

Notable Incidents

Certain fatalities in confinement have been high profile, for instance a senior hospital director who perished in confinement after 120 days in detention.

A detainee held with the individual stated that he was taken to the exercise area by guards shortly before his death, clearly wounded and unclothed from the lower body. His body has not been returned to Gaza.

Further inmates who lost their lives in detention in Israel are unidentified. The prison service and defense forces supplied researchers with the figure of casualties in custody, and minimal further data for example the site where they perished, but without the detainees’ identities.

Identification Challenges

In 21 cases, primarily people from Gaza, investigators were unable to correlate the few details supplied by government bodies to a fatality registered by rights organisations, by means of statements from released detainees or reporting in the news outlets.

The detainees’ families could be unaware about their relatives’ casualties as well, as Israel has created obstacles to monitor Palestinian individuals it is holding. For seven months at the start of the war, the Israeli military declined to supply basic information about the status of numerous of persons confined in Gaza, in effect enacting a practice of unacknowledged detention, according to the advocacy organization.

Limited Transparency

From May 2024, government bodies have provided an electronic contact for enquiries about detainees from Gaza, but this has led to just a partial and limited improvement. Researchers noted|observed|commented on