Israeli database indicates only a quarter of Gaza prisoners are fighters

Only one in four detainees from Gaza are identified as fighters by Israel's military intelligence, classified data indicates, with civilians making up the vast majority of Palestinians held without charge or trial in abusive prisons.

- Emma Graham-Harrison Yuval Abraham Jerusalem

Those jailed for long periods without charge or trial include medical workers, teachers, civil servants, media workers, writers, sick and disabled people and children.

Among the most egregious cases are those of an 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer's jailed for six weeks and a single mother separated from her young children. When the mother was released after 53 days she found the children begging on the streets.

The Sde Teiman military base at one point held so many sick, disabled and elderly Palestinians that they had their own hangar, called "the geriatric pen," a soldier serving there said.

The scale of civilian detention indicated by Israel's own data has been revealed in an investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language news site Local Call.

Israeli military intelligence keeps a database of more than 47,000 named individuals whom it classifies as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters.

Commanders consider it the most accurate information Israel has on enemy forces, according to multiple intelligence sources. It is based on information including files captured from Hamas, updated regularly and includes names of new recruits.

In May this year the database listed 1,450 individuals in detention, whose files were marked "arrested." That is equivalent to just one in four of all Palestinians from Gaza held in Israeli jails on suspicion of militant links since 7 October 2023.

By May, Israel had detained 6,000 people under its "unlawful combatants" legislation, which allows indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial, official data released after legal appeals showed.