In partnership with The Shaikh Group (TSG) and as part of the Diploma Program, ICSPR issues a fact sheet titled “The Policy of Enforced Disappearance and Systematic Arrest During the War of Genocide on the Gaza Strip”
Date: 16 June 2026
Press Release
In partnership with The Shaikh Group (TSG) and as part of the Youth Civil Society Activists Diploma Program
ICSPR issues a fact sheet titled: “The Policy of Enforced Disappearance and Systematic Arrest During the War of Genocide on the Gaza Strip”
The International Commission to Support Palestinian People’s Rights (ICSPR), in partnership with The Shaikh Group (TSG), and as part of the Youth Civil Society Activists Diploma Program, has issued a fact sheet titled: “The Policy of Enforced Disappearance and Systematic Arrest During the War of Genocide on the Gaza Strip,” prepared by researcher Bahaa Al-Buheisi, examining the legal and human rights dimensions of the policies of mass arrest and enforced disappearance carried out by the Israeli occupation authorities against civilians in the Gaza Strip, and the accompanying practices of torture and detention outside any legal or humanitarian oversight.
The paper explains that this policy is not merely an emergency military measure, but a deliberate and conscious strategy aimed at breaking the morale of Palestinian society by disappearing thousands of civilians, including doctors, journalists, and displaced persons, into secret and declared detention facilities while depriving them of the minimum protections guaranteed under international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
The fact sheet indicates that the policy of systematic arrest and enforced disappearance has targeted thousands of unarmed civilians, including women, children, the elderly, and medical personnel, and has not been limited to the context of military operations, but has also extended to shelters, schools, hospitals, forced displacement routes, and ground incursions, without formal charges or legal arrest warrants.
It further notes that the occupation authorities rely on a military and legal infrastructure to impose a state of total isolation on detainees from the Gaza Strip, including the Sde Teiman camp in the Naqab as the main initial detention and interrogation site, in addition to Naqab, Megiddo, and Ofer prisons, while continuing a policy of withholding information and refusing to disclose the fate or places of detention of most detainees, as well as preventing the International Committee of the Red Cross, lawyers, and families from visiting them or even obtaining lists of their names.
According to the data cited in the fact sheet, and due to the deliberate blackout policy, no final official statistics are available, but estimates issued by prisoner affairs and human rights institutions up to May 2024 indicate that the total number of detainees from the Gaza Strip since 7 October ranges between 3,000 and 5,000 or more, while at least 1,283 detainees are being held under the so-called “Unlawful Combatant Law”. The paper also documents the killing of 52 identified detainees inside prisons and detention centers as a result of torture and ill-treatment, with additional victims whose identities have not yet been disclosed.
The fact sheet highlights that the targeting has not been limited to civilians in general, but has also included groups entitled to special protection under international law, especially medical personnel, journalists, and civil defense and relief teams. In this context, the paper documents the arrest of between 350 and 500 medical workers from inside hospitals while performing their humanitarian duties, and records documented cases of doctors, journalists, and paramedics who died inside detention centers as a result of torture, medical neglect, or ill-treatment.
The paper reviews the behavioral patterns and abuses endured by detainees inside detention camps, especially Sde Teiman camp, based on the testimonies of dozens of released detainees, which confirm the existence of a systematic and recurring pattern of inhuman detention conditions, continuous restraints, excessive physical and psychological violence, forced stripping and degrading treatment, the use of harsh interrogation methods to extract confessions, and deliberate medical neglect that led to the amputation of some detainees’ limbs or to their deaths.
On the legal side, the fact sheet stresses that Israeli practices against detainees from the Gaza Strip constitute an integrated system of grave violations of international law and fall under the categories of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, inhuman treatment, violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and breaches of the special protection owed to vulnerable groups. It adds that these practices may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute, given their scale and systematic nature.
The paper concludes with a series of urgent recommendations and demands, foremost among them calling on the Human Rights Council to establish an independent international commission of inquiry into torture, enforced disappearance, and deaths inside Sde Teiman camp and other prisons, and urging pressure to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross and legal teams immediate and unconditional access to all detention centers. It also calls for obliging Israel to immediately disclose lists of detainees, release civilians held without charge, end the application of the so-called “Unlawful Combatant Law,” activate accountability pathways before the International Criminal Court, urge states to use universal jurisdiction to prosecute those responsible for these crimes, and provide urgent protection to vulnerable groups and humanitarian personnel.
ICSPR affirms that this fact sheet comes within the framework of its efforts to expose the policies of enforced disappearance and systematic arrest against civilians in the Gaza Strip, and to strengthen legal and human rights awareness of the gravity of these crimes, in a way that contributes to expanding international pressure and accountability and ending impunity.
It should be noted that this fact sheet does not necessarily reflect the views of ICSPR or The Shaikh Group (TSG).
