Gaza: The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS) announced that an elderly Palestinian detainee has died while in Israeli custody.
According to Palestine News and Information Agency - WAFA, the death of 70-year-old detainee Mohammad Ibrahim Hussein Abu Habel, from Gaza, adds to the growing number of Palestinians who have died as a result of abuses by the Israeli prison system since the onset of the ongoing genocide.
Abu Habel, a married father of 11, was detained on November 12, 2024, at the 'Civil Administration' checkpoint. With his death, the number of identified Palestinian prisoners and detainees who have died since the beginning of the genocide has reached 71, including at least 45 from Gaza. This period has been the deadliest in the history of the Palestinian prisoner movement since 1967, raising the total number of Palestinian detainees who have died in Israeli prisons since then to 308.
Many detainees from Gaza remain subject to enforced disappearance. The situation of Gaza detainees is alarming, with reports of abuses including torture, starvation, medical neglect, and sexual violence. Recent testimonies from Gaza detainees detail severe and continuous violations endured on a near-daily basis.
The two organizations held the Israeli occupation responsible for Abu Habel's death and renewed their call to the international human rights community to take action against Israeli officials for ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people. They urged sanctions to isolate Israel internationally and restore credibility to the international human rights system, which they believe has been undermined during the genocide.
They also called for an end to the exceptional immunity granted to Israel by colonial powers, which has allowed it to evade accountability. As of early June 2025, over 10,400 Palestinian prisoners and detainees are held in Israeli prisons, including 49 women, over 440 children, and 3,562 administrative detainees. Among them, 2,214 detainees from Gaza are classified by the Israeli Prison Service as "unlawful combatants."
