Palestinian detainee Musab Hassan Udayli, 20, from the town of Osrin near Nablus, died in the Israeli Soroka Hospital, nearly three weeks after his arrest by Israeli forces.
Udayli was arrested on 22 March and was sentenced to one year and one month. He was subsequently transferred to the hospital under unclear circumstances, which culminated in his death.
His death brings the number of confirmed fatalities among Palestinian prisoners since the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza on 7 October 2023 to 64, including at least 40 detainees from the Gaza Strip. Human rights groups fear the real number may be significantly higher due to Israel’s continued practice of enforced disappearance, particularly of detainees from Gaza, and the denial of access to legal and humanitarian monitoring.
The fact that Udayli died on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day serves as a stark reminder of the escalating punitive policies and systematic violations taking place inside Israeli detention facilities. In recent months, testimonies have emerged detailing inhumane conditions, including physical and psychological torture, denial of food and water, medical neglect, solitary confinement, and widespread beatings. Detention centres have also seen the spread of infectious diseases amid a total absence of preventive or medical care.
Thousands of Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons under conditions that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet no accountability has been enforced, allowing a climate of impunity to persist. This extends to the systematic denial of medical care, the use of detention as a form of slow execution, and the continued withholding of deceased detainees’ bodies—73 in total remain withheld to date.
In light of these developments, urgent calls are growing for the international community to break its silence and take concrete steps to hold Israel accountable for its systematic violations of international humanitarian law, particularly the Geneva Conventions, which explicitly protect the rights of prisoners and require humane conditions of detention.
The death of Musab Udayli, a young man in the prime of his life, should serve as a warning of the deadly risks faced by Palestinian detainees. Israeli prisons have become spaces of torture, starvation, and both physical and psychological annihilation—shielded from global scrutiny.
