ABNA24 - Palestinian prisoners’ organizations have documented the deaths of 92 identified Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli prisons and detention camps over the past three years, while Israel continues to forcibly disappear detainees from the Gaza Strip, marking one of the deadliest periods in the history of the Palestinian captive movement.
In a documentation report issued Tuesday to mark three years since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the organizations said the 92 identified prisoners who died during this period account for approximately 28 percent of all documented Palestinian prisoner deaths since 1967, which now totals 329.
More than 100 Palestinian prisoners have died over the past three years, but the identities of only 92 have been announced. The fate of dozens of detainees from Gaza remains unknown due to their continued enforced disappearance, while Israel continues to withhold the bodies of 100 Palestinian prisoners who died in custody.
More than 26,000 arrests in West Bank
The report documented more than 26,000 arrests across the occupied West Bank and occupied Jerusalem since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war.
The figure does not include thousands of Palestinians detained in Gaza, where the organizations have been unable to fully document arrests because of continuing Israeli military operations, information restrictions and the blackout surrounding the conditions and whereabouts of detainees.
Israel’s mass arrest campaigns have targeted Palestinians from across society, including women, children, older people, the sick, journalists and human rights workers.
According to the report, more than 800 Palestinian women have been arrested or detained since the beginning of the genocide, while more than 2,000 children have been arrested in the occupied West Bank.
The arrests have extended far beyond detention itself. They have been accompanied by raids on Palestinian homes, searches, destruction of property, threats and harsh field interrogations, as well as severe psychological, social and economic consequences for detainees and their families.
9,300 Palestinian prisoners, nearly half held without trial
According to the latest figures from Palestinian prisoners’ organizations, approximately 9,300 Palestinian prisoners and detainees were being held in Israeli prisons as of the beginning of October.
They include 118 prisoners serving life sentences, 91 women and 350 children.
Another 3,101 Palestinians are being held under administrative detention, including women and children. Israeli authorities also classify 1,419 detainees, including Palestinians from Gaza as well as detainees from Syria and Lebanon, as “unlawful combatants.”
Palestinian prisoners’ organizations said approximately 49 percent of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons are detained without charge or trial, reflecting the expanding use of arbitrary and administrative detention as a tool of pressure and control.
The figures show that Israel’s detention system has extended beyond the deprivation of individual freedom into a sweeping policy affecting broad sections of Palestinian society.
Israeli prisons: A system of torture and slow killing
The report documented a sharp escalation in abuses against Palestinian prisoners over the past three years, including systematic torture and mistreatment, starvation, deprivation of water, medical neglect, physical and psychological assaults, sexual violence, prison raids and collective punishment.
Prisoners’ organizations also documented the use of rubber-coated bullets, electric-shock devices, batons, gas, stun grenades and police dogs during violent repression inside Israeli prisons, alongside cases of direct killing and slow killing through sustained abuse and deprivation.
These practices have been documented through testimonies from Palestinian prisoners visited by legal teams, accounts from released prisoners and periodic reports issued by Palestinian and international human rights organizations.
Enforced disappearance conceals the fate of Gaza detainees
Palestinian prisoners’ organizations warned that the publicly available figures represent only the minimum documented scale of the violations because Israel continues to subject hundreds of detainees from Gaza to enforced disappearance.
Human rights organizations and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been prevented from reaching large numbers of detainees, while information about their detention locations, conditions and fate has been withheld.
As a result, the full scale of the abuses committed against Palestinian prisoners is believed to be far greater than existing statistics reveal.
The prisoners’ organizations called for intensified international pressure to end violations against Palestinian detainees, repeal legislation allowing the death penalty to be imposed on prisoners, and ensure that Israeli military and civilian courts are not used to impose discriminatory or retaliatory punishments.
They stressed that protecting the lives of Palestinian prisoners and detainees is an international responsibility and cannot be treated as an internal Israeli matter or left at the mercy of retaliatory policies.
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