ANKARA 

Civilians make up the vast majority of Palestinians from Gaza held without charge or trial by Israel and designated as “unlawful combatant,” classified data showed on Thursday.

The data revealed by The Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call showed that only one in four detainees from Gaza are identified as fighters by Israel’s military intelligence.

Elderly people, children, medical workers, teachers, civil servants, journalists, and disabled individuals are among those held indefinitely without charge or trial.

Among the detainees were Fahamiya al-Khalidi, an 82-year-old with Alzheimer’s who was abducted with her female carer in Gaza City in December 2023, and held in Israel for six weeks, the data showed.

A single mother, Abeer Ghaban, 40, was also abducted and separated from her young children by the Israeli army.

When the mother was released after 53 days, she found the children begging on the streets.

“They were alive, but seeing the state they had been in for 53 days without me broke me,” Ghaban said. 

“I wished I had remained in prison rather than seeing them like that.” 

Human toll

Nesreen Deifallah, a Palestinian mother, spent months searching for her 16-year-old son Moatasem, who went missing while looking for food on Dec. 3, 2024.

Eight months later, the mother met a recently freed detainee, who told her that he had met her son in detention.

“I fainted when I learned that my son was still alive,” she said. Still, she cannot confirm where he is or contact him.

Rights groups warn that the real proportion of civilians in Israeli detention is even higher.

“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,” Samir Zaqout, deputy director of the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, told The Guardian.

The unlawful combatants legislation allows Israel to hold Palestinians indefinitely without evidence in open court, denying them access to lawyers for extended periods.

“As soon as the wave of mass arrests began in Gaza in October 2023, there was serious concern that many uninvolved people were being detained without cause,” said Tal Steiner, director of the Public Committee Against Torture.

“This concern was confirmed when we learned that half of those arrested at the beginning of the war were eventually released, demonstrating that there had been no basis for their detention in the first place.”

Hassan Jabareen, director of the Palestinian legal rights group Adalah, warned that Israel’s unlawful combatant law “strips detainees of protections guaranteed under international law, including safeguards specifically intended for civilians, using the ‘unlawful combatant’ label to justify the systematic denial of their rights.”

The Israeli army has launched a brutal military offensive on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 63,700 Palestinians in Gaza. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.