Genocide behind bars: 32 Palestinians killed in Israeli detention in 2025

Relatives of a Palestinian prisoner look on at the Ofer military prison complex in the occupied West Bank on 12 October 2025

Mera Aladam reports in Middle East Eye on 30 December 2025:

Leading Palestinian prisoner rights groups have accused Israel of committing a “systematic genocide” against detainees, with at least 32 recorded prisoner deaths in 2025.

According to an annual report published by the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) and Addameer, prisoners have died under “severely inhumane systematic policies”.

“These facilities have turned into sites of torture, designed to break prisoners physically and mentally through prolonged, deliberate suffering, and slow-execution policies,” the report said.

At least 100 prisoner deaths under these conditions have been documented since October 2023, according to information disclosed by Israel. The identities of 86 of them were released, while the real Palestinian death toll in Israeli prisons remains unknown.

The report noted that 94 bodies of Palestinians – 83 of whom died during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – continue to be withheld by Israeli authorities.

The past two years have seen an “unprecedented level of brutality and systematic execution of prisoners”, the rights groups said, adding that the death toll during this period is equivalent to the number of prisoners killed in Israeli custody over the past 24 years.

“These facts prove that what is happening to Palestinian prisoners is systematic genocide,” the report stressed. Detainees are subject to torture, starvation, medical negligence, sexual violence, mass isolation and deprivation of all basic human needs. “Prisoner institutions assert that the intensity of the crimes and brutality documented over two years has exceeded all legal limits, violating all international laws, norms, and conventions.”

Mass arrests, field executions
Meanwhile, the report highlighted mass arrests across the occupied West Bank and Gaza