A November report by Physicians for Human Rights—Israel (PHRI) titled “Deaths of Palestinians in Israeli Custody: Enforced Disappearances, Systematic Killings, and Cover-Ups” states, “alongside Israel’s perpetration of genocide in Gaza, authorities have also waged an unprecedented assault on detained Palestinians. … [T]he killing of Palestinians in custody has become a normalized practice, directly derived from official state policy.” Israel officially admits to 98 deaths of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons during the first eight months of the war in Gaza. However, hundreds of Palestinians who entered the Israeli prison system are now “missing.” The report documents a death rate of one person every four days.
This report analyzes the policy of “forced disappearances,” the “systematic killing of Palestinians in military detention facilities and IPS [Israeli Prison Service] prisons,” the cover-up, the cause of these deaths, the failure to notify family members, the repeated failure of post mortem examinations, the failure to allow the family’s doctor to examine the body, and the deliberate policy to allow bodies to decompose in order to hinder any future investigations of the cause of death.
The overwhelming majority of Palestinians Israel detains are noncombatants and have no ties to any militant organization, according to a September report published by the Israel’s +972 Magazine. The Israeli government has tried to construct a legal loophole by carefully calling these Palestinian civilians “unlawful combatants,” instead of prisoners of war, which would require compliance with Geneva Convention mandates. There is no due process or even oversight. Using this term, an Israeli soldier can detain a Palestinian without evidence or even charges, and hold the person almost indefinitely, while denying access to a lawyer for 75 days. The 75-day limit is routinely extended by introducing “secret evidence” at hearings that only last a few minutes. However, the mere use of this term indicates that the Israeli government never had a legal case against the “unlawful combatant” detainee.
