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Per information from Israel, no fewer than 98 Palestinian individuals have died while in custody starting from October 2023. A rights monitoring body located in Israel has stated that the true toll is likely substantially larger, because of numerous of unaccounted for people from Gaza.

Report Findings

A new investigation documented casualties resulting from brutality, lack of healthcare, and starvation. Investigators utilized transparency petitions, medical examiner documents, and interviews with legal representatives, activists, relatives, and witnesses.

Official sources disclosed complete information only for the opening period of the hostilities. During this time, reported numbers reveal an historically high casualty rate among Palestinian detainees, averaging a single fatality every four days.

Updated Statistics

Israeli defense forces finalized information on detention fatalities for May 2024, and correctional authorities in September 2024. Analysts identified another 35 casualties in confinement after these dates and validated them with official sources.

Although the aggregate figure of casualties recorded being substantially larger than previous assessments, it probably omits the complete extent of losses among Palestinians, per the director of the prisoners and detainees department.

“Even though we are providing evidence for a greater figure of fatalities than earlier indicated, this is an incomplete account,” he stated. “We are confident that there are still people who died in confinement that we are unaware of.”

Non-Combatant Fatalities

Classified government records indicates that the vast majority of Palestinian detainees from Gaza who died in detention were civilians, based on a parallel investigation.

In May of this year, a military intelligence database monitoring all militants in Gaza, a list of in excess of 47,000 identified persons, listed just 21 deaths in custody. At that time, 65 Palestinians from Gaza had perished in detention.

Detention Conditions

Assault, abuse, and other abuse of detainees from Palestine is now standard practice across Israel’s detention facilities over 24 months of hostilities. Senior officials have publicly acknowledged starvation rations and an underground jail confining Palestinian individuals who are kept in darkness.

Current and former inmates and informants from the armed services have uniformly asserted widespread breaches of human rights protocols.

Institutionalized Cruelty

The organized mistreatment came with a troubling surge in casualties recorded across at least 12 detention centers in Israel. Over ten years prior to the hostilities, there were on average a couple fatalities a year.

“This is not only a single occurrence sporadically. It is institutional and it is expected to endure,” a spokesperson said, partly since there is a environment of almost complete immunity for harming and abusing Palestinians.

Only a single instance of assaulting detainees has proceeded to court, with the soldier given a penalty to 210 days. An attempt to prosecute others over a severe beating involving sexual violence led to right-wing protests and the apprehension of Israel’s chief legal officer, with the accused individuals now requesting that indictments against them be dismissed.

No Legal Action

“Regardless of this large quantity of fatalities, over two years not a single person has faced arrest,” the spokesperson stated. “There exist no indictments over any fatality.

“While these policies continue to be enforced, every Palestinian in detention is in danger, even the healthy ones, even the juveniles who have no underlying conditions.”

Prominent Examples

Several casualties in detention have been publicly known, such as a senior hospital director who died in prison after 120 days in detention.

A detainee held with the deceased testified that he was brought to the yard by prison staff shortly before his passing, visibly injured and naked from the lower body. His corpse remains unreleased to Gaza.

Further inmates who died in confinement by Israeli authorities remain anonymous. Detention administrators and military gave investigators with the figure of casualties in confinement, and basic other details including the location where they perished, but without the prisoners’ names.

Documentation Problems

For 21 instances, mainly individuals from Gaza, investigators were unable to connect the minimal data given by authorities to a death recorded by advocacy bodies, either through testimony from former inmates or coverage in the media.

The detainees’ families might not have learned about their loved ones’ deaths also, as Israel has impeded efforts to monitor detainees it is holding. During 210 days at the outset of the war, the Israeli military refused to provide fundamental details about the status of many of individuals held in Gaza, practically enacting a approach of unacknowledged detention, as stated by the advocacy organization.

Restricted Access

Starting in May 2024, officials have created an digital correspondence for enquiries about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has provided only a modest and inadequate enhancement. Investigators noted|observed|commented on