Israel only identifies roughly a quarter of the thousands of Palestinians from Gaza it’s imprisoning under its combatant law as combatants, a new report of internal military documentation reveals.
According to an investigation released Thursday, Israel only identified 1,450 of 6,000 Palestinians in detention under its combatant law as combatants. This means that, even under Israel’s documentation, the vast majority of detainees are civilians.
This was revealed from an internal Israeli database using information taken from Hamas. The proportion classified as combatants amounts to only a quarter of those detained from Gaza since October 7, 2023. The investigation was done by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call.
Israel’s “unlawful combatant” law gives the Israeli military sweeping power to imprison Palestinians indefinitely without trial and bar Palestinians from access to legal counsel. Numerous children have been imprisoned under this law, and have been barred from legal counsel and from seeing their families. This practice has often amounted to institutionalized “enforced disappearance,” Amnesty International has said.
In Israeli prison, Palestinians are subject to horrific treatment, including torture and denial of basic needs like food and medical care, with these conditions often leading to death.
The report highlights the story of one Palestinian, Fahamiya al-Khalidi, imprisoned by Israel after being abducted by soldiers in Gaza in December 2023. Despite al-Khalidi being 82 years old, limping, and unable to remember her own age, Israel labelled her as an unlawful combatant and imprisoned her for six weeks. When asked, Israel said that her detention was “not appropriate.”
The abduction and detention of elderly people and people with disabilities is so common that the notorious Sde Teiman military prison has a section soldiers call the “geriatric pen.”
The number of Palestinians identified as combatants by Israel’s military may be a vast overcount, human rights groups said, per the investigation.
“We believe the proportion of civilians among those detained is even higher than Israel’s own figures suggest,” said Samir Zaqout, deputy general director of the Al -Mezan Center for Human Rights. “At most, perhaps one in six or seven might have any link to Hamas or other militant factions, and even then, not necessarily through their military wings.”
Israel has used the unlawful combatants law to carry out the “forced disappearance of hundreds and even thousands of people,” said Jessica Montell, the director of Israeli human rights group HaMoked.
Israel has denied the investigation’s findings, saying that “most” of the people it’s detaining are combatants, despite its own documentation.
Israeli forces have a long history of claiming Palestinians are military combatants without substantial evidence. As the report notes, “Israeli politicians, the military and the media often refer to all detainees as ‘terrorists.’”
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