العربية
HE
العربية
HE
Since October 7, 2023, the State has stopped providing information about Palestinian prisoners to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as it had regularly done until then. HaMoked has since become one of the few remaining channels of communication between detainees and their families. Over the past three years, tens of thousands of families have contacted HaMoked, seeking to establish the whereabouts of relatives who were arrested or disappeared following contact with the Israeli military.
In most cases, HaMoked has succeeded in locating the place of detention. However, tracing Gaza residents is more difficult. Most detainees from Gaza are held under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, 5762–2002 (hereafter: the UCL Law). The Law permits prolonged detention without trial and affords detainees even fewer procedural safeguards than those available to administrative detainees. Following the outbreak of the war in Gaza, the Law was amended, drastically extending the periods during which a person may be held without access to a lawyer or judicial review; these detainees may currently be held for 33 days without being brought before a judge and for 21 days without the State allowing them to meet with a lawyer.
Between October 2023 and October 2026, HaMoked submitted 5,991 individual requests for information about the whereabouts of Gaza residents. In 33.6% of these requests (2,015 out of 5,991), the response was “no indication”, meaning that in approximately one-third of cases, no information was provided about where the Gaza residents were being held.
In some cases, HaMoked received solid evidence that the person it was seeking to locate had been arrested by Israeli forces in Gaza or had last been seen in an Israeli prison. Between 2023 and 2026, HaMoked filed 114 habeas corpus petitions with the High Court of Justice (HCJ), demanding that the State disclose the whereabouts of those who had disappeared. Following 76 of these petitions, the military eventually located the person in its detention facilities, despite having previously reported “no indication” of their detention. However, in 38 cases, the person whose whereabouts the State was asked to establish was not located.
Thus, in one-third of HaMoked’s habeas corpus petitions, the person was not located despite evidence that they had been arrested by the Israeli military. This raises grave concerns about enforced disappearances of Gaza detainees on a large scale.
Three of HaMoked's petitions consolidated
The Court consolidated three such petitions, concerning Gaza residents arrested in July 2024, to consider the principled question raised by HaMoked: whether, and in what way, the State is obliged to provide information about the whereabouts of a person held under the UCL Law.
The Court allowed the State to postpone its response to the petitions until it submitted its response affidavit in HCJ 1537/24, a separate petition concerning the State’s duty to cooperate with the ICRC. However, in those proceedings too, the State refrained from presenting a principled, detailed legal position on the underlying question of the petition. After more than two years, on June 3, 2026, the Court issued a judgment ordering the State to resume cooperation with the ICRC. Meanwhile, the individual cases in HaMoked’s three petitions were resolved, with the State providing information about the detainees’ whereabouts.
On August 21, 2026, the State submitted its response to HaMoked’s petitions and asked that they be deleted. It argued that the petitioners’ individual cases had been resolved, while the broader issue had already been addressed in the ICRC judgment, which concerned related matters. The State added that it had provided the ICRC with a list of Palestinian prisoners and their places of detention. In its view, once the Court had recognized its duty to provide information to the ICRC, there was no need to consider separately its duty to provide information about Gaza detainees to other parties. The State further argued that families could now obtain information about their detained relatives through the ICRC.
HaMoked emphasized that these developments did not address the question of principle underlying the petitions: the State’s duty towards Gaza detainees. The ICRC judgment had been issued without the State presenting an official position on the question underlying the petition. Moreover, it concerned Israel’s obligations towards the ICRC, rather than towards the detainees themselves. HaMoked also noted that the judgment had yet to be implemented and that, even if implemented, it was doubtful whether it would provide a solution for these Gaza detainees. The question underlying the petitions therefore remained unresolved.
The judgment
On October 12, 2026, the Court ordered that the petitions be deleted without deciding on the principled question at its base. In its judgment, the Court criticized the State’s failure to present a reasoned position on its duty towards detainees from the Gaza Strip, stating: “Unfortunately, the State did not take up the challenge, preferring not to address the legal question – regrettably so.”
Nevertheless, the Court listed several circumstances that, in its view, rendered consideration of the petitions in their current form unnecessary. These included the resolution of the individual cases, the ICRC judgment and an overall decline in the number of Gaza detainees. The question of the State’s duty to provide information about the whereabouts of Gaza residents classified as “unlawful combatants” was thus left without a judicial determination.
As of October 2026, despite the formal ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, 1,419 people are held in Israeli prisons under the UCL Law, approximately 200 more than in November 2025. This is a growing population of detainees held under emergency legislation that severely restricts the right to legal representation and judicial review of detention.
Detainees held incommunicado for prolonged periods are particularly vulnerable to violence and abuse. In some cases, they may even disappear following their arrest, with no information available about their fate or whereabouts. Under these circumstances, clarifying the State’s duty to provide information about the whereabouts of Gaza detainees is more important than ever. The State’s refusal to fulfill its basic duty to provide this information systematically enables enforced disappearances and leaves hundreds of families in prolonged uncertainty about the fate of their loved ones.
