Three out of four Palestinian detainees from Gaza in Israeli prisons are civilians held without charge, an investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call revealed, citing Israeli Intelligence data.

Among those jailed for long periods without charge or trial are medical workers, teachers, civil servants, media workers, writers, sick and disabled people, and children. Among the most egregious cases are an 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s who was jailed for six weeks and a single mother who was separated from her young children and who, upon her release after 53 days, found them begging on the streets.

A soldier serving at the Sde Teiman military base said that the facility at one point held so many sick, disabled, and elderly Palestinians that they had their own hangar, which was dubbed "the geriatric pen."

Israeli military intelligence maintains a database of over 47,000 named individuals whom it classifies as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters, and according to multiple intelligence sources, Israeli commanders consider this database to be the most accurate information "Israel" has on "enemy forces". The sheer scale of civilian detentions in Israeli prisons is revealed through this database.

In May this year, the database listed 1,450 individuals in detention with files marked "arrested", a number which is equivalent to just one in four of all Palestinians from Gaza held in Israeli jails on suspicion of links to resistance groups since October 7, 2023.

Official data released after legal appeals showed that at that point in May, "Israel" had detained 6,000 people under its "unlawful combatants" legislation, which allows indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial. "Israel" is also holding up to 300 Palestinians from Gaza who are suspected of taking part in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in criminal detention. "Israel" claims it has sufficient evidence to prosecute them, yet no trials have been held as of yet.

'Israel' arresting more civilians than fighters

Rights groups and Israeli soldiers have described an even smaller ratio of fighters to civilians, and when photos of stripped and shackled Palestinians caused international outrage in late 2023, senior officers told Haaretz newspaper that “85 to 90 per cent” were not Hamas members.

Deputy Director of the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Samir Zaqout, whose organization has represented hundreds of civilians held in Israeli jails, told The Guardian, “We believe the proportion of civilians among those detained is even higher than Israel’s own figures suggest.”

“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," Zaqout clarified.

In a statement, "Israel’s" military said it had returned more than 2,000 civilian detainees to Gaza after finding no connection to militant activity. It further claimed that while it was fighting "enemies" who “disguise themselves as civilians,” those releases demonstrated “a thorough review process” for detentions. However, while it did not dispute the existence of the database or the figures for May, it claimed that “most” detainees were “involved in terrorist activities."

The military said that in May, 2,750 Palestinians were permanently interned as "unlawful combatants", and another 1,050 had been released under ceasefire deals.

82-year-old, Alzheimer-ridden 'terrorist'

Israeli politicians, the military, and the media often refer to all detainees as “terrorists", a classification that includes 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 under the "unlawful combatant" law, as prison documentation shows.

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According to a military medic who treated her in Anatot detention centre after she injured herself on a fence, al-Khalidi was disoriented, could not remember her age, and thought she was still in Gaza.

“I remember her limping badly toward the clinic. And she’s classified as an unlawful combatant. The way that label is used is insane,” the medic, whose presence was proven through photographs, said, as cited by The Guardian.

The Israeli military justified the arrest of al-Khalidi, stating that she was detained based on specific intelligence, noting that the arrest should not have been followed through, explaining that the detention was inappropriate and the result of misjudgment. However, "Israel" further justified the arrest by stating that “individuals with medical conditions or even disabilities can still be involved in terrorism," citing the example of the al-Qassam Brigades commander Mohammad al-Deif, who was wounded in the past.

'Israel' conducts mass arrests with no basis

Israeli authorities can hold someone for 75 days before allowing access to a lawyer and 45 days before bringing them in front of a judge to authorize the detention, periods which were extended at the start of the war to 180 and 75 days respectively. No known trials have been conducted for anyone captured in Gaza since October 7, 2023, the investigation revealed.

Tal Steiner of the Public Committee Against Torture stated that the mass arrests in Gaza raised immediate concerns about uninvolved people being detained, which were confirmed when half of those initially detained were later released, proving there had been no basis for their detention.

Israeli authorities' figures on the number of "unlawful combatants" were given to the group after it launched a lawsuit, with one soldier who served at Sde Teiman military prison, which became notorious for abuse, describing mass detentions of elderly and severely ill people.

Hassan Jabareen, the director of the Palestinian legal rights group Adalah, stated that "Israel’s" "unlawful combatants" legislation was designed to facilitate the mass detention of civilians and enforced disappearances.

“It 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," Jabareen added.

The military medic who treated al-Khalidi said that he also treated a woman who was bleeding heavily after a miscarriage and a breastfeeding mother who had been separated from her baby and who asked him for a pump to stop her breast milk from drying up.

The case of Abeer Ghaban

Abeer Ghaban, 40, who was held with al-Khalidi inside "Israel", was separated from her daughter, aged 10 and two boys aged nine and seven, when she was detained at an Israeli checkpoint in December 2023, according to The Guardian. Although she was officially still married, she was raising the three children alone, so when she was taken away, the children were left on their own.

She realized during interrogation that officers had confused her husband, a farmer, with a Hamas member of the same name, and although one officer conceded his error after comparing photographs, she was kept in jail for six more weeks.

Israeli troops oppose setting the innocent free

An Israeli soldier stationed at a military facility said that troops deployed to guard Palestinians often opposed releasing civilians cleared of any Hamas links because they wanted to hold them indefinitely as leverage in hostage negotiations.

“We kept releasing people ‘for free’, and it made [soldiers] angry,” the Israeli stated, adding, “[The soldiers] would say: ‘They’re not returning hostages, so why should we let them go?’”

This stance was echoed by Israeli politicians, like in the case of Mohamed Abu Salmiya, director of Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital. Upon his release, Simcha Rothman, chair of the Israeli Knesset's constitution, complained that Abu Salmiya was free "not in exchange for hostages."

Rights groups suspect that this approach of holding detainees as leverage has unofficially been a driver of mass detentions throughout the war, and a spokesperson for Al Mezan added that even before October 7, "Israel" withheld the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians to use them as bargaining chips instead of returning them to their families for burial.

Leveraging Incommunicado to maximize anguish 

Jessica Montell, the director of the legal rights organization HaMoked, stated that the "unlawful combatants" legislation has been used to facilitate the forced disappearance of hundreds and even thousands of people.

Nesreen Deifallah spent months searching for her 16-year-old son, Moatasem, who went to look for food on December 3, 2024, and never came home, even checking decomposed corpses in hospital morgues in case she recognized his clothes.

In August, a recently freed detainee told Deifallah he had been held with Moatasem, causing her to faint when she learned that her son was still alive, but she still cannot confirm where he is or contact him, who was reportedly sick, according to the man.