RAMALLAH, April 20, 2025 (WAFA) – 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.
They reported that 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 the intensified and systematic abuses perpetrated 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 so-called 'Civil Administration' checkpoint.
With Abu Habel’s 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. As a result, the total number of Palestinian detainees who have died in Israeli prisons since 1967 has risen to 308.
It is important to note that many detainees from Gaza remain subject to the crime of enforced disappearance.
They emphasized that the situation of Gaza detainees remains among the most alarming, exposing an unprecedented scale of abuses, including torture, starvation, medical neglect, and sexual violence. In recent months, testimonies from Gaza detainees have been among the most harrowing, detailing a pattern of severe and continuous violations endured on a near-daily basis.
The two organizations held the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the death of Abu Habel and renewed their call on the international human rights community to take decisive action to hold Israeli officials accountable for the ongoing war crimes being committed against the Palestinian people.
In a joint statement, they urged the imposition of sanctions to isolate Israel internationally and to restore the credibility of the international human rights system, which they stressed has been severely undermined during the genocide.
They also called for an end to the exceptional immunity granted to Israel by colonial powers, which has enabled it to evade accountability and punishment.
As of early June 2025, the number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israeli prisons has surpassed 10,400—a figure that includes only those incarcerated in facilities operated by the Israeli Prison Service, and excludes those held in military camps run by the Israeli army. Among them are 49 women, over 440 children, and 3,562 administrative detainees. Notably, 2,214 detainees from Gaza are classified by the Israeli Prison Service as "unlawful combatants.”
T.R.
