Palestinian detainees 'not informed' of family deaths by Israel, barred from funerals

Thousands of jailed Palestinians across Israeli prisons are going months without being informed if a relative has passed away, as well as being denied the right to bid them farewell, the Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said in a statement on Saturday.

The practice has been described as "part of the systematic policies of theft and deprivation” against Palestinians, the agency said, as cited by the Turkish Anadolu agency.

The Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs gave the example of detainee Nihad Subaih, whose father passed away on Saturday.

The ministry said that Subaih was also denied the right to bid his mother goodbye when she passed away last year. The Palestinian detainee, from Nablus, has been imprisoned since 2003, and has been sentenced to life imprisonment five times in addition to his initial 15-year sentence.

The Authority pointed out that "thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons lost their relatives during the war since October 7, 2023, and some of them did not receive the news until several months later and were denied the right to bid them farewell, particularly prisoners from Gaza".

Israel has been carrying out heightened levels of abuse against Palestinian prisoners since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7 last year, which has killed more than 43,000 people.

Numerous reports have emerged over the months accusing Israeli prison officers of carrying out torture, rape and other forms of sexual abuse against Palestinian detainees – in what the The Palestinian Authority's prisoners affairs minister described as "a war of revenge" on the prisoners.

Some of Israel’s most notorious prisoners, chiefly the Sde Teiman and Ofer prisons, have become synonymous with the rampant levels of abuse carried out against Palestinian detainees, from both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. 

The number of detainees since October 7, 2023 has reached more than 11,500 Palestinians from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club. At least 1,526 Palestinians from Gaza have been detained as of June this year, the Israeli NGO B'Tselem says, though the number is expected to be higher.