■ Palestinian political detainee killed in Israeli occupation’s custody

26/2/2025
Commission of Detainees' Affairs & Palestinian Prisoners' Society

Ramallah, Palestine - Israeli occupation authorities have disclosed the killing of Palestinian political detainee Raafat Abu Fanouneh in their custody. Occupation authorities informed the Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs that Abu Fanouneh lost his life today, on February 26, 2025.

Raafat Adnan Abdulaziz Abu Fanouneh is a 34-year-old husband and father who was abducted by the occupation army from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. He did not have any pre-existing health issues. The circumstances and manner in which he was killed remain unclear because occupation authorities have imposed an information blackout on the prisoners.

Abu Fanouneh was being held at the Ramla Prison and was recently transferred to the occupation’s Assaf Harofeh Hospital where he was announced dead. He was wounded by soldiers during his arrest, and his brother Shadi was also taken along with him. Occupation authorities refused to allow any lawyer visits to Abu Fanouneh during his time in detention, leaving his family in the dark for 16 months, before learning that he lost his life today. Since October 7, 2023, family visits have been completely halted.

Abu Fanouneh is the latest Palestinian to be killed in the occupation’s prisons and military camps in obscure ways that the Israeli army continues to conceal. With Abu Fanouneh, there have been 60 identified Palestinian political detainees who have been killed in custody since the start of the genocide in October 2023, at least 39 of them arrested from Gaza. Dozens more have been killed with the occupation refusing to reveal their fate or identities, leaving countless families in fear and psychological torture. The total number of identified martyred detainees since the occupation of 1967 is 297 people. The rate of killings in prisons and military camps is the highest historically.

The occupation army only responds sporadically and arbitrarily to legal requests for information, and often uses the pretext of an ‘ongoing investigation’ to evade accountability, and to torture Palestinians both physically and mentally as a matter of policy. The Israeli army is the only official side able to reveal the fate of martyred Palestinian detainees since there is no evidence of their killing with the army continuing to withhold their bodies.

The Commission and the PPS stress that the rate of Palestinian detainees losing their lives is unprecedented and will only increase with time. Thousands of Palestinians are held behind bars undergoing a myriad of severe violations including torture, starvation, sexual assault, deprivation of medical treatment, unsanitary conditions leading grave and infectious diseases. The international community must act now to save the lives of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli custody.