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Based on information from Israel, no fewer than 98 Palestinians have lost their lives while in custody beginning in October 2023. An advocacy organization operating from Israel has reported that the actual number is likely substantially higher, due to hundreds of missing individuals from Gaza.

Report Findings

A new investigation tracked fatalities attributed to physical violence, medical neglect, and malnutrition. Analysts used official data requests, forensic reports, and testimonies with lawyers, human rights defenders, family members, and eyewitnesses.

Israeli authorities disclosed detailed data solely covering the opening period of the war. Over this period, official figures show an record death toll among detained Palestinians, averaging a life lost each 96 hours.

Latest Data

Israeli defense forces most recently revised information on custodial deaths for May 2024, and correctional authorities during September 2024. Researchers discovered a further 35 fatalities in confinement subsequent to these periods and validated them with government bodies.

Although the aggregate figure of casualties documented being significantly higher than earlier projections, it probably does not reflect the complete extent of Palestinian loss, per the director of the prisoners and detainees department.

“Although we are providing evidence for a larger total of fatalities than earlier indicated, this is not the entire story,” he explained. “We are certain that there are still people who died in custody that we have not identified.”

Civilian Casualties

Confidential government records indicates that the vast majority of incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza who died in prison were non-combatants, based on a related investigation.

During May of this year, a military intelligence database tracking all fighters in Gaza, a roster of over 47,000 listed people, listed merely 21 deaths in confinement. By that point, 65 Gazans from Gaza had died in jail.

Detention Conditions

Assault, abuse, and other abuse of Palestinians has become routine across Israel’s jail system over 24 months of hostilities. Senior officials have publicly referenced inadequate food and an underground jail holding Palestinian individuals who are denied sunlight.

Present and past prisoners and informants from the armed services have uniformly asserted widespread breaches of international law.

Organized Maltreatment

The organized mistreatment occurred alongside a disturbing rise in deaths recorded across a minimum of 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. Over ten years before the hostilities, there were typically several casualties a year.

“This isn’t just an individual case here and there. It is institutional and it is expected to endure,” a spokesperson stated, in part because there is a environment of near total impunity for harming and abusing Palestinian individuals.

Only a single instance of attacking detainees has come to trial, with the military personnel sentenced to half a year. An attempt to charge others over a brutal attack featuring sexual violence resulted in public rallies and the arrest of Israel’s senior defense attorney, with the suspects now requesting that indictments against them be withdrawn.

Lack of Accountability

“Despite this large quantity of fatalities, over two years no one has been arrested,” the spokesperson noted. “There are no charges over any fatality.

“During the time these measures continue to be enforced, each Palestinian individual in detention faces risk, including the those in good health, even the youth who have no medical issues.”

Prominent Examples

Certain fatalities in custody have been widely reported, including a senior medical chief who lost his life in prison after four months in custody.

A prisoner detained alongside the deceased stated that he was led to the yard by guards just prior to his demise, obviously hurt and unclothed from the waist down. His body remains unreleased to Gaza.

Other prisoners who lost their lives in Israeli custody remain anonymous. Detention administrators and defense forces provided investigators with the total of deaths in custody, and minimal further data including the location where they lost their lives, but not the prisoners’ names.

Identification Challenges

For 21 instances, mostly people from Gaza, investigators were unable to match the few details supplied by officials to a casualty documented by advocacy bodies, either through accounts from former inmates or accounts in the press.

The detainees’ families might not have learned about their family members’ fatalities as well, as Israel has impeded efforts to track detainees it is confining. For seven months at the outset of the war, the Israeli military would not provide to provide fundamental details about the whereabouts of thousands of individuals held in Gaza, effectively enacting a practice of forced disappearance, as stated by the human rights group.

Insufficient Disclosure

Beginning last May, officials have provided an digital correspondence for requests about detainees from Gaza, but this has resulted in merely a modest and inadequate enhancement. Analysts noted|observed|commented on