Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHRI) tracked deaths from causes including physical violence, medical neglect and malnutrition for a new report, using freedom of information requests, forensic reports and interviews with lawyers, activists, relatives and witnesses.
Israeli authorities only provided comprehensive data for the first eight months of the war. Over this period official figures show an unprecedented casualty rate among Palestinian detainees, on average one death every four days.
The military last updated data on deaths in detention for May 2024, and the Israel Prison Service (IPS) in September 2024. PHRI researchers identified another 35 deaths in detention after these dates and confirmed them with Israeli authorities.
Although the total number of deaths charted is significantly higher than other recent estimates, it likely fails to capture the full scale of Palestinian loss, said Naji Abbas, director of the prisoners and detainees department at PHRI.
“Even though we are providing evidence for a higher number of deaths than [previously reported] this is not a full picture,” he continued, adding, “We are sure that there are still people who died in detention that we don’t know about.”
Classified Israeli data indicates the majority of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who died in jail were civilians, according to a parallel investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.
In May this year a military intelligence database tracking all Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters in Gaza, a list of more than 47,000 named individuals, listed only 21 deaths in custody. By that point 65 Palestinians from Gaza had died in jail.
The figures for death in detention cover “security prisoners”, a category that includes civilians from Gaza held without charge or trial and prisoners of conscience from the occupied West Bank. Three of the dead were Palestinians with citizenship or residency in Israel.
Physical violence, torture and other abuse of Palestinians has been normalised across Israel’s jail system over two years of war, with the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, boasting about starvation rations and an underground jail holding Palestinians who never see daylight.
Current and former detainees and whistleblowers from the Israeli military have all alleged systemic violations of international law.
The institutionalised cruelty came with a disturbing rise in deaths recorded across at least 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. In the decade before the war, there were on average two or three deaths a year.
“This isn’t just an individual case here and there. It is systemic and it will continue,” Abbas stated, in part because there is a culture of near total impunity for killing and mistreating Palestinians.
Just one case of assaulting detainees has come to trial, with the soldier sentenced to seven months. An attempt to prosecute others over a vicious assault including sexual violence led to right-wing protests and the arrest of Israel’s top military lawyer, with the suspects now demanding charges against them are dropped.
“Despite this mass number of deaths, over two years no one has been arrested,” Abbas said, adding, “There have been no charges over any killing.
“While these policies are being applied, every Palestinian in detention is in danger, even the healthy ones, even the young ones who have no [underlying] medical issues.”
Some deaths in detention have been high profile, including Adnan al-Bursh, 50, who was the head of orthopaedics at al-Shifa hospital, and died in Ofer prison after four months in detention.
A prisoner held with Bursh testified that he was brought to the yard by guards shortly before his death, visibly injured and naked from the waist down. His body has not been returned to Gaza.
Others prisoners who died in Israeli custody remain anonymous. The Prison Service and military provided PHRI with the number of deaths in detention, and minimal other details including the site where they died, but not the prisoners’ names.
In 21 cases, mostly individuals from Gaza, PHRI was not able to match the few details provided by authorities to a death recorded by rights organisations, either through testimony from released detainees or reporting in the media.
The detainees’ families may not know about their loved ones’ deaths either, as Israel has made it difficult to track Palestinians it is holding. For seven months at the start of the war the Israeli military refused to provide basic information about the status of thousands of people detained in Gaza, in effect implementing a policy of forced disappearance, PHRI said.
From May 2024 it has provided an email address for enquires about Palestinians from Gaza, but this has provided only a partial and limited improvement. PHRI noted “continued failures and lack of transparency”.
Lawyers are repeatedly told there is no record of their client’s arrest, even when it has been well documented. Over six months last year, Israeli authorities gave this response to inquiries about the status of about 400 individuals, rights group HaMoked reported.
Among the most high-profile prisoners is Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, who was detained during a raid in December 2024. For a week the Israeli military denied holding him, despite video footage showing Israeli soldiers leading him into a vehicle.
The intense media scrutiny that ultimately led to acknowledging his detention is rare, and Israel’s refusal to provide clear, timely information about the status of prisoners “provides substantial grounds to fear that many are no longer alive”, the PHRI report added.
“These grave violations of international law have rendered any effort to determine the full scope of Israel’s policy of killing detained Palestinians, or to trace the fate of the many Palestinians taken into custody, extremely difficult, if not impossible.”
The Alfaqawi family had to petition Israel’s high court to find out that Mounir Alfaqawi, 41, and his son Yassin, 18, had died in detention. Israeli forces arrived at their home in Khan Younis in March 2024, interrogated both men in front of their relatives then took them away.
When HaMoked tried to trace them on behalf of the family, the military repeatedly claimed it had no record of detaining either man. A legal appeal in October won an admission that the men were “no longer alive”, and a claim military police were investigating their deaths.
Another former detainee testified he was forced to serve as a human shield for Israeli soldiers with the father and son. There are likely to be other families who should be mourning but are still hoping their loved one will return from Israeli jails.
Under the ceasefire agreed in mid-October, Israel released 250 Palestinian prisoners who had been convicted in Israeli courts, and 1,700 Palestinian detainees from Gaza who had been held indefinitely without charge or trial.
However, the scale of detentions has been so vast that even after that mass release, at least 1,000 others are still held by Israel under the same conditions.
The Israeli military announced that it acts “in accordance with Israeli and international law”, and is aware of the deaths of detainees, including those with pre-existing medical conditions or injuries “as a result of the hostilities”.
“As per standard protocol, an investigation is conducted for each death of a detainee by the military police,” the military said in a statement.
The IPS reported it operates in accordance with the law, “examines” every death in custody and refers cases to the “competent authorities as required”.
“The claims described do not reflect the conduct or procedures of the Israel Prison Service, and we are not aware of the incidents as presented,” it added in a statement.
