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Based on information provided by Israel, no fewer than 98 Palestinians have perished while detained since October 2023. An advocacy organization based in Israel has stated that the actual toll is almost certainly significantly larger, as a result of hundreds of unaccounted for people in Gaza.

Investigation Outcomes

A new investigation tracked casualties attributed to brutality, medical neglect, and malnutrition. Researchers employed official data requests, autopsy findings, and interviews with lawyers, advocates, relatives, and witnesses.

Israeli authorities provided detailed data limited to the first eight months of the hostilities. Throughout these months, government statistics indicate an record death toll among detained Palestinians, amounting to a life lost every four days.

Latest Data

The military most recently revised data on custodial deaths for May 2024, and detention administration in September 2024. Investigators identified a further 35 deaths in custody after these dates and validated them with government bodies.

Even with the total number of casualties charted being much greater than other recent estimates, it likely fails to capture the complete extent of Palestinian casualties, per the leader of the prisoners and detainees department.

“While we are offering documentation for a greater figure of fatalities than once estimated, this is not the entire story,” he explained. “We are sure that there are still detainees who perished in custody that we don’t know about.”

Non-Combatant Fatalities

Confidential official information shows that the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who died in jail were non-combatants, based on a parallel investigation.

By May of this year, a defense forces registry monitoring all militants in Gaza, a roster of over 47,000 identified persons, documented just 21 fatalities in custody. By that date, 65 Gazans from Gaza had died in prison.

Custodial Environment

Physical violence, torture, and further cruelty of Palestinian individuals has become routine across Israel’s detention facilities during 24 months of hostilities. Senior officials have publicly referenced inadequate food and an subterranean prison holding Palestinians who never see daylight.

Current and former prisoners and whistleblowers from the armed services have uniformly asserted routine infractions of international law.

Systemic Abuse

The organized mistreatment came with a troubling surge in casualties documented across no fewer than 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. Over ten years before the hostilities, there were on average a couple fatalities a year.

“This is not merely an isolated incident sporadically. It is systemic and it is expected to endure,” an official commented, in part because there is a culture of near total impunity for killing and mistreating detainees.

Merely one incident of attacking detainees has proceeded to court, with the soldier handed a punishment to seven months. A endeavor to try others over a brutal attack featuring abuse led to political demonstrations and the detention of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the accused individuals now insisting that charges against them be withdrawn.

No Legal Action

“Regardless of this significant total of deaths, throughout the conflict no one has faced arrest,” the spokesperson said. “There exist no prosecutions over any death.

“As long as these policies continue to be enforced, all Palestinian detainees in confinement faces risk, also the those in good health, including the youth who have no underlying conditions.”

High-Profile Cases

Certain fatalities in custody have been publicly known, including a middle-aged hospital director who perished in confinement after 120 days in detention.

A detainee incarcerated with the individual testified that he was brought to the exercise area by guards just prior to his demise, obviously hurt and unclothed from the lower body. His body has not been returned to Gaza.

Additional detainees who perished in confinement by Israeli authorities are unidentified. The prison service and military provided investigators with the total of fatalities in detention, and limited additional information for example the facility where they perished, but excluding the prisoners’ names.

Documentation Problems

Regarding 21 occurrences, mostly individuals from Gaza, investigators were not able to match the limited information provided by officials to a death registered by advocacy bodies, via testimony from released detainees or reporting in the press.

The detainees’ families might not have learned about their relatives’ casualties either, as Israel has created obstacles to track Palestinians it is confining. For seven months at the start of the war, the armed services refused to give basic information about the status of thousands of individuals confined in Gaza, practically enacting a policy of forced disappearance, as stated by the rights monitoring body.

Limited Transparency

Starting in May 2024, officials have created an digital correspondence for requests about Palestinian individuals from Gaza, but this has led to just a modest and inadequate betterment. Analysts noted|observed|commented on