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Per figures provided by Israel, no fewer than 98 detainees from Palestine have lost their lives during detention starting from October 2023. An advocacy organization located in Israel has indicated that the actual number is almost certainly considerably higher, because of many of unaccounted for detainees originating in Gaza.

Report Findings

A new investigation documented casualties resulting from physical violence, lack of healthcare, and inadequate nutrition. Researchers employed freedom of information requests, autopsy findings, and testimonies with lawyers, human rights defenders, family members, and eyewitnesses.

Israeli authorities disclosed detailed statistics solely covering the first eight months of the hostilities. During this time, government statistics show an record death toll among Palestinian prisoners, amounting to a life lost once every four-day period.

Recent Figures

Israeli defense forces most recently revised data on detention fatalities for May 2024, and the prison service during September 2024. Researchers documented another 35 fatalities in custody subsequent to these timeframes and validated them with Israeli authorities.

Although the aggregate figure of casualties documented being much greater than previous assessments, it probably omits the complete extent of Palestinian casualties, per the director of the detainee affairs unit.

“While we are providing evidence for a greater figure of deaths than previously reported, this is an incomplete account,” he stated. “We are confident that there are still people who died in confinement that we don’t know about.”

Non-Combatant Fatalities

Classified Israeli data indicates that the vast majority of incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza who died in detention were civilians, based on a parallel examination.

During May of 2024, a defense forces registry monitoring all militants in Gaza, a registry of over 47,000 identified persons, documented just 21 casualties in custody. By that point, 65 Gazans from Gaza had lost their lives in jail.

Custodial Environment

Brutality, mistreatment, and additional maltreatment of detainees from Palestine is now standard practice across Israel’s jail system over the duration of conflict. High-ranking authorities have publicly acknowledged starvation rations and an underground jail confining Palestinians who never see daylight.

Existing and previous prisoners and whistleblowers from the Israeli military have collectively claimed routine infractions of human rights protocols.

Organized Maltreatment

The organized mistreatment occurred alongside a alarming increase in casualties registered across at least 12 prison sites in Israel. During the previous decade preceding the war, there were on average several fatalities a year.

“This isn’t just an individual case occasionally. It is systemic and it is likely to persist,” a spokesperson stated, partially because there is a culture of near total impunity for killing and mistreating detainees.

Only a single instance of beating inmates has proceeded to court, with the service member handed a punishment to half a year. An attempt to prosecute others over a vicious assault featuring assault resulted in right-wing protests and the detention of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the accused individuals now insisting that allegations against them be dismissed.

Lack of Accountability

“In spite of this mass number of fatalities, throughout the conflict not a single person has been arrested,” the spokesperson said. “There exist no prosecutions over any death.

“During the time these measures are being applied, every Palestinian in confinement is at peril, also the healthy ones, even the youth who have no medical issues.”

Prominent Examples

Several casualties in custody have been publicly known, such as a 50-year-old medical chief who perished in detention after a third of a year in custody.

An inmate detained alongside the deceased testified that he was taken to the courtyard by prison staff shortly before his demise, obviously hurt and unclothed from the lower body. His remains has not been returned to Gaza.

Other prisoners who died in detention in Israel are unidentified. Detention administrators and defense forces provided researchers with the number of fatalities in custody, and basic further data including the facility where they died, but without the detainees’ identities.

Recognition Difficulties

In 21 cases, primarily people from Gaza, researchers were not able to correlate the few details given by officials to a fatality registered by human rights groups, by means of testimony from released detainees or coverage 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 detaining. Over half a year at the start of the war, the defense forces declined to supply basic information about the condition of numerous of people detained in Gaza, in effect implementing a practice of forced disappearance, per the rights monitoring body.

Limited Transparency

From May 2024, authorities have created an digital correspondence for requests about Palestinian individuals from Gaza, but this has led to just a partial and limited betterment. Researchers noted|observed|commented on