HaMoked to the Military Advocate General: Hundreds of Gaza residents have disappeared after being in military custody; Israel must establish an orderly and systematic registration mechanism for all Gazans held within the Gaza Strip

From its establishment in 1989, HaMoked has worked to locate Palestinians arrested by Israeli security forces, in order to inform their worried families of the fact and place of detention. However, since the outbreak of the bloody war in October 2023, and as the scale of arrests has increased many times over, Israel has disavowed its obligation – even under the laws of war – to provide information to the families of detained Gaza residents. The High Court of Justice (HCJ) has endorsed this policy, approving an arrangement allowing only indirect communication of whereabouts and only in order to schedule a meeting with an attorney and provided that a meeting ban has not been imposed on the detainee. However, this arrangement does not and cannot apply to the many detainees held by Israeli security forces within the Gaza Strip, who are not transferred to official detention facilities in Israel.

Accordingly, on October 1, 2025, HaMoked sent a complaint to the Military Advocate General (MAG) regarding the impossibility of locating detained Gaza residents due to the lack of registration during their custody by the military inside the Gaza Strip. HaMoked requested that the MAG instruct the military forces operating in the Strip and arresting Gaza residents to meticulously record these arrests, and make this information available in real time to all bodies responsible for locating detainees. In its letter, HaMoked noted that this is a widespread phenomenon, and even the default situation when it comes to Gaza residents held by Israeli forces within the Strip and not transferred to incarceration in Israel.

HaMoked further stated that in the past two months alone, it has been forced to file habeas corpus petitions to the HCJ on behalf of 54 Gaza residents, in whose cases the military responded that there was “no indication” of their arrest, despite eye-witnesses attesting to the arrest. HaMoked stressed that such petitions are filed only when there is a first-degree relative willing and able to sign a power of attorney for the submission and also provide an affidavit detailing the circumstances of the arrest of their loved one. In addition to these cases, there are hundreds of others where the military claimed there was “no indication of arrest,” in which HaMoked refrained from petitioning due to the inability to collect and sign a detailed affidavit from an eyewitness to the arrest. Either way, given that only a portion of the relevant cases reach HaMoked, it is clear that hundreds of individuals have “disappeared” without a trace after being taken by Israeli forces in Gaza, with no mechanism in place to allow their relatives to receive current and reliable information on their fate from that point onward.

It should be noted that about a year ago, HaMoked contacted the MAG regarding seven Gaza residents – including a five-year-old girl – who disappeared after being in military custody, and for each of whom the military stated that there was “no indication” of their custody or arrest, and therefore neither of their death in custody (regarding the case of the girl and her father, see “Unaccounted For”, HaMoked’s report published in November 2024, p. 6). No response was ever received to this letter.