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Only a quarter of the Palestinian detainees held by Israel by Israeli forces are fighters, according to a joint investigation by the Israeli-Palestinian magazine + 972, Local Call, and the British newspaper The Guardian.

Among those detained are thousands of people who have been detained under Israel’s 2002 Unlawful Combatants law, which allows authorities to seize people if they believe they have ties to organizations deemed “illegal,” like Hamas, despite the fact that they are unable to link them to a particular act.

A single mother separated from her young children, who she later discovered begging on the streets, and an 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s who was jailed for six weeks, according to the joint investigation.

Let’s examine this more closely:

What was discovered by the investigation?

According to commanders, a classified Israeli military database is the most reliable source of information on Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighters in Gaza, according to investigators. More than 47 000 people are identified in the database as members of the armed groups, according to Israeli intelligence.

Only 1, 450 of those 47, 000 were listed as being detained in May, which indicates that the other 1, 000 Palestinians detained by Israel were not Hamas or PIJ fighters.

Members of other armed groups in Gaza are not included in the database, which the Israeli Prison Service claims make up less than 2% of all “unlawful combatant” detainees.

What about those held in criminal custody?

Up to 300 Palestinians are being detained in Israel on suspicion of involvement in the attacks on October 7 in addition to those who are being held as “unlawful combatants.”

Israel claims to have sufficient evidence to prosecute them, but has not yet done so. They are therefore classified as criminal detainees.

Israel has been repeatedly accused of deliberately labeling civilians as “terrorists” throughout its war against Gaza, including many journalists.

Israeli defense officials and soldiers who claimed that of the 9, 000 fighters Israel claimed to have killed at the time, the majority were actually civilians were cited in a March report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Based on the same leaked database, an earlier report from + 972, Local Call, and The Guardian revealed that Israel was aware that 83 percent of the people who died in Gaza during the war were likely civilians.

Who is Israel accused of being a criminal combatant?

Young and old Palestinians, among others, have been accused of a wide range of crimes.

In the investigation, a soldier who was stationed at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel claimed that because only the prisoners were able to get older or get seriously hurt were referred to as “the geriatric pen.”

The soldier claimed that they would simply take large numbers of people from Beit Lahiya, Gaza, the Indonesian Hospital. They brought men who were basically useless, people who had no legs, or people who were in wheelchairs. One 75-year-old man has severely infected stumps in his memory. I’ve always assumed that the alleged justification for patient arresting was some sort of hostage-seeking resumption.

Fahamiya al-Khalidi, an 82-year-old Alzheimer’s patient who was taken from Gaza City in December 2023 along with her female caregiver, was one of those prisoners who, according to prison records, was held as an unlawful combatant for six weeks.

She was reportedly confused, unable to recall her age, and believed she was still in Gaza after sustaining a broken leg on a fence, according to a military medic at the Anatot detention center.

The same doctor who saw Khalidi also claimed to have treated a breastfeeding mother who had been separated from her baby and who had requested a pump to stop her milk from drying up.

What are the prison conditions in Israel?

Terrible.

As part of a prisoner-exchange with Israel in February, 183 Palestinian prisoners emerged gaunt, frail, and covered in dirt. Many of them had been detained without charge. The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society claimed that the bodies of Palestinian prisoners who had been released by Israel had evidence of torture on them after their release.

At least 75 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 2023, according to whistleblower testimony and video evidence that have been released about the rape of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli guards.

According to a United Nations report from July dernier, “a number of appalling acts, including waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees, among others things, are in flagrant violation of international human rights law and humanitarian law.”

What is the Israeli government’s position on Palestinians held in prison?

To make life as challenging as possible while praising it.

The prison service is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister. He has stated that one of his “highest goals” has been to “improve the conditions of the terrorists in the prisons and to reduce their rights to the bare minimum that the law requires.

Ben-Gvir bragged about how he had cut down on the length of his shower and food and removed electrical devices while claiming that “everything that was published about the abominable conditions” for Palestinians in Israeli jails was true.