A demonstrators holds a picture during a protest to mark the Palestinian Prisoner's Day, in Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank April 17, 2025. Mussa QawasmaReutersBy Al Jazeera StaffPublished On 4 Sep 20254 Sep 2025Israeli military intelligence believes that only a quarter of the Palestinian detainees from Gaza held by Israel are fighters, according to a joint investigation released on Thursday by the Israeli-Palestinian magazine 972, the Hebrew-language magazine Local Call, and the British newspaper The Guardian.Among those detained are thousands arrested under Israels 2002 Unlawful Combatants legislation, which allows authorities to seize individuals if they believe they are linked to organisations deemed unlawful, such as Hamas, even if they cannot tie the individual to a specific act.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Israel starving Gaza: A visual breakdownlist 2 of 4Israeli data shows 83 percent of Gaza war dead are civilians: Reportlist 3 of 4How Israeli armys own data shows vast civilian death rate in Gazalist 4 of 4Why has Israel imprisoned 10,000 Palestinians?end of listThe joint investigation revealed that one of those detained was an 82-year-old woman with Alzheimers who was jailed for six weeks, and a single mother separated from her young children, who she later found begging on the streets.Lets take a closer look:What did the investigation find?Investigators reviewed a confidential Israeli military database, said to be regarded by commanders as the most accurate information on Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighters in Gaza.
The database contains the names of more than 47,000 individuals believed by Israeli intelligence to be members of the armed groups.However, out of those 47,000, only 1,450 were listed as arrested in May, meaning that other Palestinians detained three-quarters of the 6,000 Palestinians held by Israel at the time had not been classified as Hamas or PIJ fighters.The database excludes members of other armed groups in Gaza, who are reported by the Israeli Prison Service to make up less than 2 percent of all unlawful combatant detainees.Demonstrators, dressed in costumes depicting skeletons, hold props representing dead babies, during a protest in solidarity with Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, August 3, 2025. Mohammed TorokmanReutersWhat about those in criminal detention?In addition to those being held as unlawful combatants, there are up to 300 Palestinians being held in Israel on charges related to the October 7 attacks.
Advertisement They are classified as criminal detainees as Israel claims to have enough evidence to prosecute them, but has yet to do so.Throughout its war on Gaza, Israel has been consistently accused of deliberately mislabelling civilians as terrorists, including many journalists.Journalists killed in an Israeli strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis ScreengrabAl JazeeraA March report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz carried accounts from both Israeli defence officials and soldiers admitting that, of the 9,000 fighters Israel claimed to have killed at that time, most were, in fact, civilians.An earlier report released in late August by 972, Local Call, and The Guardian, based on the same leaked database, showed that Israel was aware that 83 percent of those killed in Gaza during the war were likely to have been civilians.Who has Israel accused of being an unlawful combatant?A wide cross-section of Palestinians has been accused, including young and old.One soldier who had been stationed at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel was quoted in the investigation as saying that one section of the prison was referred to as the geriatric pen, because it housed only elderly or gravely injured detainees.From the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, Gaza they would just take masses of people, the soldier said. They brought men in wheelchairs, people without legs, or with legs that were basically useless.
I remember one man, aged 75, with badly infected stumps. I always assumed the supposed excuse for arresting patients was that maybe they had seen the hostages or something.Among those prisoners was Fahamiya al-Khalidi, an 82-year-old Alzheimers patient, who was taken from Gaza City in December 2023 alongside her female caregiver and held as an unlawful combatant for six weeks, according to prison records.A military medic at Anatot detention centre reported that she was confused, unable to recall her age, and believed she was still in Gaza after injuring herself on a fence.The same medic who saw Khalidi also said he treated a woman experiencing severe bleeding after a miscarriage, as well as a breastfeeding mother who had been separated from her infant and requested a pump to prevent her milk from drying up.Protesters wave Israeli national flags in support of soldiers being questioned for detainee abuse, outside of the Sde Teiman military base, Monday, July 29, 2024 Tsafrir AbayovAP PhotoWhat are conditions like in Israeli prisons?Terrible.
*Reporting by Aljazeera.*
How many Palestinian detainees from Gaza does Israel think are fighters?
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