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Per data from Israel, a minimum of 98 Palestinians have died while detained beginning in October 2023. A rights monitoring body operating from Israel has indicated that the actual number is almost certainly considerably higher, due to many of unaccounted for people in Gaza.

Report Findings

An updated study tracked casualties resulting from physical violence, failure to provide medical care, and starvation. Analysts employed transparency petitions, medical examiner documents, and interviews with legal representatives, human rights defenders, family members, and witnesses.

Official sources released complete statistics only for the opening period of the hostilities. Throughout these months, government statistics show an historically high fatality rate among Palestinian prisoners, amounting to a single fatality each 96 hours.

Recent Figures

The military most recently revised information on deaths in detention for May 2024, and correctional authorities in September 2024. Researchers documented a further 35 deaths in custody subsequent to these dates and verified them with official sources.

Despite the total number of casualties charted being much greater than earlier projections, it almost certainly does not reflect the complete extent of Palestinian loss, according to the director of the prisoner monitoring division.

“Even though we are offering documentation for a greater figure of casualties than previously reported, this is not the entire story,” he explained. “We are confident that there are yet detainees who died in confinement that we have not identified.”

Civilian Casualties

Restricted official information suggests that the vast majority of incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza who perished in prison were non-combatants, per a simultaneous inquiry.

In May of 2024, a military intelligence database following all militants in Gaza, a list of more than 47,000 identified persons, recorded merely 21 casualties in detention. By that point, 65 individuals from Palestine from Gaza had died in detention.

Detention Conditions

Assault, mistreatment, and other abuse of detainees from Palestine is now standard practice across Israel’s detention facilities during two years of conflict. Senior officials have publicly referenced minimal sustenance and an below-ground detention center confining detainees who never see daylight.

Existing and previous inmates and informants from the defense forces have uniformly asserted systemic violations of human rights protocols.

Organized Maltreatment

The systematic abuse occurred alongside a troubling surge in deaths recorded across no fewer than 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. During the previous decade preceding the war, there were on average several deaths a year.

“This is not just an individual case occasionally. It is institutional and it will continue,” a representative commented, partly because there is a climate of almost complete immunity for fatalities and maltreatment of detainees.

Merely one incident of attacking detainees has come to trial, with the military personnel given a penalty to half a year. An effort to charge other suspects over a severe beating involving sexual violence caused public rallies and the apprehension of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the suspects now insisting that charges against them be dismissed.

Absence of Consequences

“Regardless of this significant total of casualties, during 24 months not a single person has been detained,” the representative noted. “There have been no prosecutions over any fatality.

“As long as these measures are being applied, every Palestinian in detention is in danger, even the those in good health, including the youth who have no medical issues.”

Prominent Examples

Some deaths in detention have been high profile, including a 50-year-old medical chief who died in confinement after 120 days in detention.

An inmate incarcerated with the deceased reported that he was brought to the courtyard by prison staff just prior to his passing, clearly wounded and naked from the waist down. His corpse has not been repatriated to Gaza.

Further inmates who perished in confinement by Israeli authorities are unidentified. Correctional authorities and defense forces provided investigators with the number of deaths in confinement, and minimal other details for example the location where they lost their lives, but not the prisoners’ names.

Identification Challenges

Regarding 21 occurrences, mostly detainees from Gaza, investigators were not able to correlate the minimal data supplied by government bodies to a fatality recorded by human rights groups, by means of statements from released detainees or reporting in the news outlets.

The inmates’ next of kin may not know about their family members’ fatalities either, as Israel has impeded efforts to track Palestinians it is detaining. For seven months at the beginning of the hostilities, the Israeli military declined to supply essential data about the condition of thousands of people confined in Gaza, effectively implementing a practice of unacknowledged detention, as stated by the rights monitoring body.

Restricted Access

From May 2024, authorities have provided an electronic contact for inquiries about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has led to just a partial and limited enhancement. Analysts noted|observed|commented on