Overview

In 2026, detention conditions for Palestinians held for alleged security offenses remain extremely harsh. More than 9,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees (administrative detainees and detainees under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law), are subjected to violence, degradation, overcrowding, starvation, and neglect, including medical neglect. As a result of these incarceration conditions, inmates have been released from custody with irreversible physical injuries, including...

Detention and incarceration systems

Fewer than 15% of security inmates held in IPS facilities, almost all of whom are Palestinians, are convicted offenders serving a prison sentence. More than half of the 9,384 inmates (according to figures from early May 2026) are being held without trial, charges or a fixed release date, either as administrative detainees or under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law. Among the inmates are children, patients, women, elderly people and medical staff. For ongoing updates on the number...

Deaths in military or IPS custody

PHRI documented at least 103 deaths of Palestinian security detainees and prisoners in IPS prisons (52% of the cases), military detention facilities, or during transport to these facilities by the military, between October 7, 2023 and March 2026. This number represents nine additional deaths in custody since the publication of the previous State of the Occupation report, which covered information up to October 2025. While some of these nine victims died in recent months, others died earlier,...

Incarceration conditions

Incarceration conditions in both military and IPS facilities continue to be extremely harsh and, as noted, have resulted in deaths. The entire security inmate population of prisoners, detainees, administrative detainees and detainees under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, adults, and minors, including those incarcerated before October 2023, lives in conditions that had already been deliberately and significantly worsened before October 7, 2023, and even more so since. Starvation...

Systemic abuse of inmates

As noted in the State of the Occupation report for the 58th year of occupation, violence, abuse and humiliation have become a fixed, inseparable part of daily life for security inmates. Information collected and testimonies taken by human rights organizations published in reports and in investigative journalism, depict a horrifying reality in which inmates, including children, older adults, medical patients, and people with disabilities, are subjected to threats and violence from the moment...

Incarceration conditions and violence against Palestinian children

In 2025, Palestinian children under the age of 18 held in the Israeli detention and incarceration systems continued to suffer from increasingly severe harm. On any given month, an average of about 350 Palestinian children are held in Israeli incarceration facilities, about half of them in administrative detention, without charge or trial, with the youngest administrative detainee being a 14-year-old child. Israeli military law, which governs the detention and incarceration of Palestinian...

Disappearances

In the absence of a proper system for registering arrests, and as the number of Palestinian detainees held by Israeli security forces grows, in 2026 many Palestinian families from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip remain without basic information as to the whereabouts of arrested family members, adults and children alike. In October 2023, in a breach of its obligations under international law, Israel stopped providing the ICRC with information on detainees and banned it from visiting them....

Denial of visits

Denial of family visits The incarceration emergency declared in October 2023 is anchored in a temporary order that has since been repeatedly extended. The order serves as the source for the sweeping denial of family visits to security inmates in Israeli prisons. When the declaration was issued, provisions were made for periodic reviews and amendments in accordance with security and other developments. Since then, more than two and a half years after the outbreak of the war, and despite the...