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Per data provided by Israel, no fewer than 98 Palestinian individuals have lost their lives while in custody beginning in October 2023. A rights monitoring body operating from Israel has indicated that the real toll is almost certainly significantly higher, due to many of missing people from Gaza.

Investigation Outcomes

A new investigation documented deaths attributed to physical violence, failure to provide medical care, and malnutrition. Investigators utilized transparency petitions, forensic reports, and interviews with lawyers, activists, next of kin, and observers.

Government bodies provided detailed data solely covering the initial 240 days of the hostilities. Over this period, official figures reveal an historically high fatality rate among detained Palestinians, averaging a life lost each 96 hours.

Updated Statistics

The military most recently revised data on detention fatalities for May 2024, and detention administration by September 2024. Analysts documented another 35 fatalities in custody following these dates and validated them with Israeli authorities.

Even with the total number of casualties documented being much greater than previous assessments, it likely fails to capture the complete extent of Palestinian casualties, per the head of the prisoner monitoring division.

“Although we are offering documentation for a larger total of deaths than once estimated, this is an incomplete account,” he said. “We are confident that there are even now detainees who lost their lives in custody that we are unaware of.”

Civilian Deaths

Classified government records shows that the majority of Palestinian detainees from Gaza who died in detention were ordinary citizens, per a related inquiry.

In May of the current year, a armed services record tracking all fighters in Gaza, a list of more than 47,000 identified persons, listed only 21 deaths in detention. At that time, 65 Gazans from Gaza had lost their lives in jail.

Custodial Environment

Brutality, torture, and further cruelty of detainees from Palestine has been normalised across Israel’s jail system during the duration of conflict. Senior officials have publicly acknowledged inadequate food and an underground jail detaining detainees who are denied sunlight.

Current and former inmates and informants from the defense forces have uniformly asserted systemic violations of international law.

Institutionalized Cruelty

The institutionalised cruelty occurred alongside a troubling surge in deaths documented across no fewer than 12 prison sites in Israel. In the decade prior to the hostilities, there were usually several deaths a year.

“This isn’t merely an isolated incident occasionally. It is systemic and it is expected to endure,” a spokesperson said, partly due to the fact there is a climate of almost complete immunity for fatalities and maltreatment of Palestinians.

Merely one incident of attacking detainees has proceeded to court, with the military personnel sentenced to 210 days. An attempt to prosecute others over a severe beating including assault led to public rallies and the arrest of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the alleged perpetrators now demanding that charges against them be withdrawn.

No Legal Action

“Despite this mass number of casualties, over two years not one individual has faced arrest,” the official stated. “There exist no charges over any fatality.

“As long as these measures are being applied, every Palestinian in detention is in danger, also the those in good health, including the young ones who have no health problems.”

Notable Incidents

Several casualties in custody have been publicly known, such as a senior hospital director who perished in prison after a third of a year in custody.

An inmate held with the victim stated that he was brought to the yard by guards shortly before his passing, visibly injured and exposed from the waist down. His remains remains unreleased to Gaza.

Further inmates who lost their lives in detention in Israel are unidentified. Correctional authorities and armed services gave researchers with the number of deaths in custody, and basic additional information including the site where they died, but without the inmates’ personal details.

Documentation Problems

For 21 instances, mainly individuals from Gaza, analysts were unable to correlate the few details supplied by government bodies to a fatality registered by rights organisations, either through accounts from freed prisoners or reporting in the media.

The inmates’ next of kin may not know about their relatives’ casualties as well, as Israel has impeded efforts to track Palestinians it is confining. For seven months at the start of the hostilities, the armed services refused to provide basic information about the condition of numerous of persons detained in Gaza, effectively carrying out a practice of forced disappearance, as stated by the rights monitoring body.

Insufficient Disclosure

Beginning last May, officials have established an email address for enquiries about Palestinian individuals from Gaza, but this has resulted in merely a modest and inadequate improvement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on