New Data Reveals 98 Palestinian Deaths in Israeli Custody since October 7
PALESTINE ISRAEL GAZA GENOCIDE, 24 Nov 2025
Yuval Abraham | +972 Magazine - TRANSCEND Media Service
Israel Prison Service officers prepare Palestinian prisoners for release as part of a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, at Kteziot Prison, southern Israel, 26 Feb 2025.
(Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Post-mortems of the deceased and testimonies from former detainees suggest many died from torture, medical neglect, and food deprivation. According to a leaked Israeli intelligence database, dozens were civilians.
17 Nov 2025 – At least 98 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons and military detention centers since October 7, 2023, in many cases seemingly as a direct result of torture, medical neglect, and food deprivation by soldiers and prison officers. Of those detained from Gaza, who make up the majority, less than one-third were classified by the Israeli army itself as militants — meaning Israel was responsible for the deaths of dozens of Palestinian civilians in custody.
Previously unreported data on Palestinian deaths in detention was obtained from the Israeli army and Israel Prison Service (IPS) by Physicians for Human Rights–Israel (PHRI), which released a report today publicizing these figures. According to PHRI, 98 is likely a significant undercount with human rights groups unable to locate hundreds more people reportedly detained in Gaza.
+972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian cross-referenced PHRI’s data with an internal Israeli military intelligence database, leaked to the publications earlier this year, to determine how many of the deceased detainees from Gaza the army considered to belong to the military wings of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (The database does not contain information about members of other armed groups in Gaza, who are listed in IPS reports as accounting for less than 2 percent of all detainees from the enclave since October 7.)
Data obtained by PHRI reveals that at least 68 captives from Gaza died in Israeli custody up until the end of August. The intelligence database — whose data we obtained in May and which, according to multiple Israeli intelligence sources, the army views as the most comprehensive bank of information about Palestinian militants in Gaza — listed 21 militants as having died in Israeli custody since the war started. At the time, 65 captives from Gaza were known to have died in Israeli prisons and detention centers, suggesting that as many as 44 deceased Gazan detainees were civilians.
+972, Local Call, and The Guardian previously revealed that the army’s internal database implies that civilians accounted for 83 percent of all those killed in Gaza, as well as three-quarters of those arrested and held in detention.
In addition to the 68 Gazans, PHRI reports that 23 Palestinians from the West Bank and three with Israeli citizenship or residency died in Israeli custody during the war, prior to August of this year, amounting to 94 detainees. Since then, at least four more Palestinians have died in custody — three from the West Bank and one from Gaza — taking the total known death toll to 98. (This does not include seven additional cases in which Palestinians were shot by the army and died in custody shortly after being detained, before they reached prison facilities.)
This figure is substantially higher than previously thought. The most recent data published in early November by three Palestinian prisoners’ rights organizations (Addameer, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society) put the number of detainees who had died in Israeli prisons and detention centers over the past two years at 81.
Between 1967 and October 2023, according to Amani Sarahneh of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, the total number of Palestinians who died in Israeli custody was 237. Though documentation during the initial years of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was inconsistent, the death toll among Palestinian prisoners and detainees over the past two years represents a stark escalation, reflecting how physical violence, torture, and other abuse of Palestinians has become normalized across Israel’s jail system during the war.
Nonetheless, PHRI notes that 98 is likely a significant undercount. “This is not a full picture,” Naji Abbas, director of the organization’s Prisoners and Detainees Department, explained. “We are sure that there are still people who died in detention that we don’t know about.”
The Israeli army last provided data about detainees who died in military detention facilities in May 2024, alongside equivalent data released by the IPS regarding prisons, at which point the total death toll across both kinds of facilities was 60; this means the rate of Palestinian detainees dying in Israeli custody during the first eight months of the war was roughly one every four days. Four months later, the IPS stated in response to a freedom of information request that three more detainees had died in Israeli prisons.
Since September 2024, additional information about Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody has been received only in response to specific inquiries about individual detainees: that is, the army and the IPS confirmed particular deaths when asked, but did not provide data of their own volition.
Meanwhile, the fate of many more Palestinians who were reportedly detained by Israeli soldiers in Gaza is unknown. The army informed the Israeli human rights group HaMoked that it has no information regarding hundreds of Palestinians whom the organization suspects were detained by its forces. In the past, the army has told human rights groups that certain individuals were not in Israeli custody, only to later report in response to legal proceedings that they had died.
Families in Gaza do not receive official notification that their relatives have died in Israeli detention and often learn about it through the media. Data provided by the state to PHRI indicates that the identities of at least 18 Gazans who died in Israeli prisons are unknown, and no notice of their deaths was given to their families.
Despite almost 100 recorded deaths in custody and abundant testimonies and other evidence of severe physical abuse — including widespread sexual violence, as documented in a damning new report by the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights — only one Israeli soldier has been prosecuted; he was sentenced in February to seven months for assaulting detainees from Gaza. Five other soldiers have been charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm to a detainee at the Sde Teiman detention center, after footage was leaked to the Israeli media last year.
As Haaretz reports, the Israeli army’s top legal official deliberately avoided launching investigations into alleged war crimes by Israeli soldiers, including in relation to deaths of detainees in custody, due to anticipated right-wing backlash.
“There have been no charges over any case of killing,” Abbas explained. “This isn’t just an individual case here and there. It is systemic and it will continue.”
According to the data obtained by PHRI, Sde Teiman was the most lethal detention facility, accounting for the deaths of 29 Palestinians since October 7. At least two more detainees died at Ofer Camp (where +972 revealed testimonies of severe abuse, electric shocks, and the rampant spread of disease), at least one at Anatot Camp, and at least seven more at various other military-operated detention facilities in southern Israel. Five died at Soroka Hospital after being transferred from military detention facilities while still in custody.
With regard to formal prisons operated by the IPS, at least 16 detainees died at Ketziot Prison, at least five at Ofer Prison, at least six inside Nitzan Prison and the IPS Medical Center (Marash), seven in Megiddo Prison, four at the complex comprising Nafha Prison and Ramon Prison, at least one at Eshel Prison, at least three inside Kishon Prison, and three more at Shikma Prison. The place of death of eight others is unknown.
‘Every night, we could hear people beaten to death’
+972, Local Call, and The Guardian reviewed 10 post-mortem reports of Palestinians who died in Israeli custody, written by doctors who attended autopsies on behalf of the families of the deceased. In five of them, there was evidence of violence as a possible cause of death: multiple broken ribs, bruising on the skin or near internal organs, and tears in internal organs. At least three deaths resulted directly from neglect — including a case of extreme malnutrition, a case of untreated blood cancer, and a case in which a diabetic detainee was deprived of insulin.
Omar Daraghmeh, 58, died in Megiddo Prison in October 2023. A post-mortem CT scan revealed extensive bleeding in his abdominal area, raising suspicion that his death was the result of physical assault or falling from a significant height.
The autopsy of Abdel Rahman Mara’i, 33, who died in the same prison the following month, also revealed signs of violence: his ribs and sternum were broken, in addition to bruising across his body. The doctor who attended Mara’i’s autopsy attributed his death to the violence he suffered.
A detainee who was in the same cell as Mara’i told PHRI: “About 15 [prison] personnel attacked him, all standing around and beating him severely. The blows lasted about five minutes and focused on hitting his head.”
Sari Hurriyah, a Palestinian attorney with Israeli citizenship who was detained at the same time as Mara’i over Facebook posts, told Israel’s Channel 13 that he witnessed Mara’i’s death in the neighboring cell. “Every night, we could hear people being beaten to death, screaming,” Hurriyah said.
According to Hurriyah’s testimony, Mara’i shouted for hours after the assault: “I’m sick, I’m in pain, I can’t breathe, bring me a doctor.” But prison guards simply entered his cell and told him to be quiet, Hurriyah said. The next day, his voice went silent; the guards realized he had died and removed him from the cell “in a black garbage bag.”
Abdel Rahman Bahash, 23, died in Megiddo Prison in January 2024. His autopsy report noted multiple fractures in his ribs, a spleen injury, inflammation, and lung tears. A possible cause of death was respiratory failure due to a lung injury. A fellow detainee reported that guards had assaulted Bahash, after which he complained of chest and rib pain but was denied medical treatment. After he could no longer stand, the guards took him away and he died a few days later.
Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmed, 17, died in Megiddo Prison in March 2025. A doctor present at his autopsy reported that he had almost no fat or muscle mass, and also suffered from colitis and scabies, leading to the suspicion that he died from starvation. His father told Haaretz: “I saw in court hearings that the boy appeared thin, his face emaciated, like other detainees suffering from malnutrition in prisons.” According to his father, Ahmed had no previous illnesses.
Arafat Hamdan, 25, died in Ofer Prison in October 2023. He had Type 1 diabetes, and a detainee who was with him said he died due to neglect: His condition gradually worsened until he stopped eating and intermittently lost consciousness.
“We called the medic again to check him, and he said to call him when Arafat passed away,” the detainee recalled in a B’Tselem report. “After an hour and a half, we saw fluid coming out of his mouth. One of the detainees checked his pulse and shouted that Arafat was dead.”
Mohammed Al-Zabar, 21, died in Ofer Prison in February 2024. Since childhood, he had suffered from intestinal disease and required specialized nutrition. His autopsy report indicated that he died due to not receiving the necessary nutrition, which led to prolonged constipation, and he was not provided medical treatment.
Thaer Abu Asab, 38, was beaten to death inside Ketziot Prison in November 2023, according to testimonies from detainees held with him. One detainee told B’Tselem that special forces stormed the cell and began beating all the inmates with batons all over their bodies until they bled from their heads. “They hit Thaer the hardest,” he recounted. “He tried to protect his head with his hands, but pretty soon he had to let go because of the blows.”
After the guards left, Abu Asab remained on the floor, still bleeding and unresponsive. The detainee said they tried to call a guard for more than an hour, but no one came. Eventually, Abu Asab was removed from the cell, and the guards informed the detainees that he had died.
The following day, the detainee continued, the Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security agency) interrogated all the inmates who were held with Abu Asab one by one, and “claimed we’d caused trouble and killed Thaer, which was why we were all injured. They said it was us who attacked each other, not the guards … He said we’d killed Thaer and wanted to frame the prison for it.”
The IPS refused to respond to +972’s detailed inquiry concerning the deaths mentioned in our report, referring us instead to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) because “COGAT is responsible for Palestinians detainees who were not convicted.” COGAT told +972 that the issue of deaths in custody is not their responsibility.
A spokesperson for the Israeli army stated that over the past two years it has been detaining people in Gaza “who are reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activity. Relevant suspects are taken for further questioning, screening and detention in designated facilities on Israeli territory.”
The statement said that suspects are “held under detention orders issued in accordance with the law, and in appropriate cases, criminal proceedings are taken against detainees. In other cases, they are held in preventive detention due to the risk they pose in order to remove them from the fighting, in full accordance with Israeli law and the Geneva Conventions.”
The army admitted that “there have been deaths of detainees, including detainees who arrived injured or in a pre-existing complex medical condition,” adding that “each death is investigated by the investigating military police” whose findings are submitted to the Military Advocate General’s Office for review.
The spokesperson added: “The claim that detainees have ‘disappeared’ from Gaza is false and erroneous.”
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Yuval Abraham is a journalist and filmmaker based in Jerusalem.
Tags: Crimes against Humanity, Gaza, Gaza Tribunal, Israel, Palestine, Prisons, Torture, USA, War crimes, West Bank
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