At least 98 Palestinian prisoners have lost their lives while being held in Israeli detention facilities since the outbreak of conflict in October 2023, according to shocking new data obtained by human rights organisations. The actual death toll is believed to be significantly higher, with hundreds of detainees from Gaza currently unaccounted for.
Systemic Failures and Unprecedented Death Rates
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an Israel-based rights organisation, has compiled a comprehensive report tracking deaths in custody through freedom of information requests, forensic reports and interviews with lawyers, activists, relatives and witnesses. Their investigation reveals an unprecedented casualty rate among Palestinian detainees, averaging one death every four days during the first eight months of the conflict.
Israeli authorities have provided only partial data, with the military last updating detention death figures in May 2024 and the Israel Prison Service (IPS) in September 2024. PHR researchers have independently identified and confirmed another 35 deaths in detention occurring after these official updates.
Naji Abbas, director of the prisoners and detainees department at PHR, emphasised that even their higher figures likely don't capture the full scale of the tragedy. "Even though we are providing evidence for a higher number of deaths than previously reported, this is not a full picture," he stated. "We are sure that there are still people who died in detention that we don't know about."
High-Profile Cases and Anonymous Victims
Among the most prominent victims was Dr Adnan al-Bursh, the 50-year-old head of orthopaedics at al-Shifa hospital, who died in Ofer prison after four months in detention. A fellow prisoner testified that Dr al-Bursh was brought to the prison yard shortly before his death, visibly injured and naked from the waist down. His body has never been returned to his family in Gaza.
Many other prisoners who died in Israeli custody remain anonymous. The Prison Service and military provided PHR with death counts and minimal details including detention sites, but consistently withheld the prisoners' names. In 21 cases, mostly involving individuals from Gaza, PHR couldn't match the sparse details provided by authorities to any deaths recorded by rights organisations or media reports.
The situation is particularly dire for families trying to locate missing relatives. For seven months at the start of the war, the Israeli military refused to provide basic information about thousands of people detained in Gaza, effectively implementing what PHR describes as a policy of forced disappearance.
Culture of Impunity and Institutionalised Cruelty
The report documents a disturbing normalisation of physical violence, torture and abuse across Israel's jail system during the two years of conflict. The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has openly boasted about starvation rations and an underground jail holding Palestinians who never see daylight.
Current and former detainees, along with whistleblowers from the Israeli military, have all alleged systemic violations of international law. This institutionalised cruelty has coincided with a dramatic rise in deaths recorded across at least 12 civilian and military facilities in Israel. Before the war, there were typically only two or three detention deaths annually.
Abbas highlighted the culture of near total impunity, noting that "despite this mass number of deaths, over two years no one has been arrested. There have been no charges over any killing." Only one case of assaulting detainees has reached trial, resulting in a seven-month sentence for a soldier.
The Alfaqawi family's experience illustrates the systemic challenges. Mounir Alfaqawi, 41, and his son Yassin, 18, were taken from their home in Khan Younis in March 2024. When rights group HaMoked tried to trace them, the military repeatedly claimed no record of their detention. Only after a legal appeal in October did authorities admit the men were "no longer alive" and claim military police were investigating their deaths.
Another high-profile case involves Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza's Kamal Adwan hospital, detained during a raid in December 2024. For a week, the Israeli military denied holding him despite video evidence showing soldiers leading him into a vehicle.
The Israeli military stated that it acts "in accordance with Israeli and international law" and investigates each detainee death through military police. The Israel Prison Service declined to comment on the findings.
