The routine use of administrative detention – on security grounds without criminal charge or trial – continues to expose Palestinian detainees to prolonged arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture and other ill-treatment and enforced disappearance. Detainees continue to face restrictions on access to legal counsel, contact with family members, independent medical examinations, and effective mechanisms through which to report abuse and seek redress.
This is not new. For years, the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory has raised concerns about the arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees, including high numbers of children, especially boys, in detention. But the situation has only deteriorated since October 2023.
There is no starker indication of the widespread and routine use of torture and other ill-treatment by the Israeli authorities against Palestinian detainees than the numbers of deaths in Israeli custody. The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory has verified that, since October 2023 at least 92 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody. One of the 92 Palestinians includes 17-year-old Walid Al Basha, who died in an Israeli prison on 22 March 2025. The autopsy showed that Al Basha, who was reportedly in good health when arrested in September 2024, displayed severe signs of starvation at the time of his death.
The Israeli authorities have announced investigations into only a handful of such deaths, with no outcomes known to date. Unless and until each death is the subject of an investigation that meets international standards and disproves allegations of wrongdoing, Israel remains responsible for every single death in custody.
The patterns described by Palestinian detainees in our interviews with them have been consistent across different Israeli detention facilities, and regardless of the time of their detention or release, indicating that the use of torture and ill-treatment is widespread and systematic. Sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinian men and women is also extensive in Israel’s detention system.
The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory also has concerns of allegations of arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and torture by Palestinian Security forces. The Office continues its open dialogue with the Government of the State of Palestine to ensure that allegations of such violations are promptly, impartially and independently investigated and perpetrators are held accountable.
Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have systematically dismantled internationally recognised safeguards against torture and other ill-treatment. Among the most significant of these safeguards is regular, confidential and unhindered access by independent monitoring bodies to places of detention, including by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
We call for immediate, regular and unhindered access by independent monitoring bodies, including the ICRC, with confidential access to detainees.