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According to figures from Israel, a minimum of 98 detainees from Palestine have died while in custody starting from October 2023. A rights monitoring body operating from Israel has reported that the real figure is probably significantly greater, because of hundreds of missing detainees from Gaza.

Study Results

An updated study documented deaths resulting from physical violence, lack of healthcare, and malnutrition. Investigators utilized official data requests, forensic reports, and testimonies with lawyers, advocates, family members, and witnesses.

Official sources provided detailed data only for the first eight months of the hostilities. Throughout these months, government statistics show an historically high fatality rate among detained Palestinians, amounting to a life lost each 96 hours.

Updated Statistics

Israeli defense forces last updated information on detention fatalities for May 2024, and the prison service during September 2024. Investigators documented an additional 35 deaths in detention following these periods and verified them with Israeli authorities.

Despite the overall count of deaths documented being substantially larger than other recent estimates, it probably fails to capture the full scale of Palestinian casualties, as stated by the director of the prisoner monitoring division.

“Although we are offering documentation for a greater figure of casualties than earlier indicated, this is not the entire story,” he explained. “We are confident that there are yet detainees who died in custody that we don’t know about.”

Civilian Deaths

Confidential Israeli data suggests that the vast majority of Palestinian detainees from Gaza who perished in prison were ordinary citizens, based on a simultaneous examination.

By May of 2024, a military intelligence database tracking all combatants in Gaza, a registry of over 47,000 identified persons, documented merely 21 casualties in detention. By that point, 65 individuals from Palestine from Gaza had perished in detention.

Prison Situation

Physical violence, abuse, and other abuse of Palestinians is now standard practice across Israel’s jail system during 24 months of war. High-ranking authorities have publicly acknowledged minimal sustenance and an underground jail confining Palestinian individuals who are denied sunlight.

Existing and previous detainees and insiders from the defense forces have all alleged systemic violations of international law.

Organized Maltreatment

The systematic abuse occurred alongside a disturbing rise in casualties registered across no fewer than 12 prison sites in Israel. During the previous decade preceding the war, there were typically two or three deaths a year.

“This is not merely an isolated incident here and there. It is institutional and it is expected to endure,” a representative stated, in part since there is a environment of almost complete immunity for killing and mistreating Palestinian individuals.

Merely one incident of beating inmates has proceeded to court, with the service member handed a punishment to 210 days. An effort to prosecute other suspects over a brutal attack involving assault caused public rallies and the arrest of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the alleged perpetrators now demanding that allegations against them be withdrawn.

Lack of Accountability

“Regardless of this mass number of casualties, throughout the conflict not one individual has been arrested,” the representative said. “There are no indictments over any killing.

“During the time these policies remain in effect, each Palestinian individual in custody is in danger, even the those in good health, including the young ones who have no medical issues.”

High-Profile Cases

Several casualties in detention have been high profile, for instance a 50-year-old medical chief who died in prison after 120 days in detention.

An inmate held with the individual reported that he was led to the yard by prison staff shortly before his passing, visibly injured and unclothed from the waist down. His body has not been returned to Gaza.

Additional detainees who lost their lives in Israeli custody remain anonymous. Correctional authorities and defense forces provided analysts with the total of fatalities in custody, and basic further data for example the facility where they lost their lives, but excluding the prisoners’ names.

Documentation Problems

Regarding 21 occurrences, primarily people from Gaza, researchers were not able to match the few details supplied by officials to a casualty registered by advocacy bodies, via testimony from former inmates or accounts in the media.

The detainees’ families may not know about their relatives’ casualties also, as Israel has impeded efforts to locate detainees it is holding. For seven months at the outset of the hostilities, the Israeli military declined to supply basic information about the status of thousands of individuals detained in Gaza, effectively enacting a practice of forced disappearance, as stated by the human rights group.

Limited Transparency

Beginning last May, officials have created an electronic contact for requests about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has provided only a incomplete and restricted enhancement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on