At Least 98 Palestinians Have Died in Israeli Custody Beginning in October 2023, Statistics from Israel Shows
Based on information provided by Israel, no fewer than 98 detainees from Palestine have perished while in custody starting from October 2023. A human rights group located in Israel has stated that the true toll is probably substantially larger, due to hundreds of missing individuals from Gaza.
Study Results
An updated study documented casualties resulting from assault, medical neglect, and inadequate nutrition. Researchers used official data requests, medical examiner documents, and testimonies with legal representatives, human rights defenders, family members, and observers.
Israeli authorities provided detailed statistics only for the opening period of the conflict. During this time, official figures reveal an unprecedented casualty rate among Palestinian detainees, amounting to a life lost each 96 hours.
Recent Figures
Official armed forces finalized information on custodial deaths for May 2024, and the prison service in September 2024. Researchers discovered a further 35 deaths in detention following these periods and validated them with Israeli authorities.
Even with the total number of fatalities recorded being significantly higher than previous assessments, it probably fails to capture the entire scope of losses among Palestinians, according to the director of the prisoner monitoring division.
“While we are offering documentation for a larger total of deaths than earlier indicated, this is not a full picture,” he said. “We are sure that there are still individuals who lost their lives in confinement that we are unaware of.”
Civilian Casualties
Restricted government records shows that the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who lost their lives in prison were non-combatants, based on a simultaneous investigation.
By May of 2024, a defense forces registry following all combatants in Gaza, a list of more than 47,000 identified persons, documented only 21 casualties in detention. By that point, 65 Gazans from Gaza had died in jail.
Custodial Environment
Assault, torture, and further cruelty of Palestinians has been normalised across Israel’s detention facilities during two years of war. High-ranking authorities have publicly referenced starvation rations and an below-ground detention center holding Palestinian individuals who are kept in darkness.
Present and past inmates and informants from the armed services have uniformly asserted systemic violations of international law.
Organized Maltreatment
The institutionalised cruelty was accompanied by a alarming increase in deaths documented across at least 12 prison sites in Israel. Over ten years prior to the war, there were on average several casualties a year.
“This is not merely an isolated incident sporadically. It is institutional and it is expected to endure,” an official said, partly since there is a culture of virtual exemption from consequences for harming and abusing Palestinian individuals.
Just one case of assaulting inmates has proceeded to court, with the military personnel given a penalty to seven months. An attempt to charge other suspects over a vicious assault including abuse led to public rallies and the arrest of Israel’s chief legal officer, with the alleged perpetrators now demanding that indictments against them be dismissed.
Absence of Consequences
“Despite this mass number of casualties, over two years not a single person has been detained,” the representative said. “There are no indictments over any killing.
“During the time these policies remain in effect, every Palestinian in confinement faces risk, even the those in good health, including the young ones who have no underlying conditions.”
Prominent Examples
Several casualties in detention have been widely reported, for instance a 50-year-old hospital director who perished in detention after 120 days in confinement.
A detainee detained alongside the deceased stated that he was brought to the exercise area by prison staff just prior to his death, clearly wounded and naked from the waist down. His body has not been repatriated to Gaza.
Additional detainees who lost their lives in detention in Israel are unidentified. The prison service and defense forces supplied researchers with the figure of fatalities in confinement, and minimal other details such as the location where they lost their lives, but not the detainees’ identities.
Recognition Difficulties
In 21 cases, mostly people from Gaza, researchers could not to connect the minimal data given by authorities to a death registered by rights organisations, via testimony from released detainees or accounts in the news outlets.
The inmates’ next of kin may not know about their loved ones’ deaths as well, as Israel has made it difficult to track Palestinian individuals it is holding. For seven months at the beginning of the hostilities, the Israeli military would not provide to provide fundamental details about the whereabouts of many of persons confined in Gaza, in effect enacting a approach of forced disappearance, per the human rights group.
Limited Transparency
Beginning last May, authorities have provided an electronic contact for requests about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has provided only a incomplete and restricted enhancement. Researchers noted|observed|commented on
